[VIFF 2019] REVIEW: Nothing is easy in 'Easy Land'

Nina Kiri as Nina in Easy Land, directed by Sanja Zivkovic.

Easy Land is Serbian-Canadian Sanja Zivkovic's first feature-length film and she goes back to her roots, depicting an immigrant single mother and her daughter struggling with their new surroundings. Jasna (Mirjana Jokovic) was an architect in her native Serbia, but works as a retail intern at a kitchen showroom. Her daughter, Nina (Nina Kiri), is struggling in school and forced to enroll in an extracurricular activity in order to graduate. What follows is an intimate look at how various factors – a lot of unfamiliarity and dissatisfaction – manifest themselves in a household that feels separated from the rest of society. 

Its 90-minute runtime is a big relief from the 150-minute endurance challenges that we've become accustomed to on the festival circuit, but there's still a lot to unpack. Almost too much to unpack, actually. Rather than a strict examination of Jasna's struggles as an immigrant, we are thrown a curveball almost right away; Jasna suffered a mental breakdown before the events of the film.

It’s hard to get a handle on Jasna, and maybe that’s the point, but it becomes difficult to tell if her problems stem from her mental illness or her everyday struggles as an immigrant. Her ego complicates her work life, believing her job is beneath her (it actually is) even though it's part of her rehab. She’s mostly a pain to work with and resists and challenges authority on nearly every occasion, and rarely does she seem to redeem herself.

The far more interesting aspect of her story is her obsession with creating a community center for immigrants, an interesting plot point that's never quite fully explored. Her attempts are ultimately fruitless, but her insistence that this community center be the saving grace for their difficult lives seems far more essential to the story and her psyche, especially with regards to her relationship with her daughter. Immigrants often feel the need to belong, and this community center — called Easy Land — is an obvious symbol of that, and despite being the basis of the film’s title is only halfway explored.

The real gem is Nina, both her performance and transformation. She yearns to escape and return to Belgrade. She's juggling a difficult time at school, no thanks to constant teasing about her mother's sexual promiscuity and mental breakdown. She's tough and impatient and longing for something bigger and better, counting the days until she can purchase a ticket out of town from selling stolen cell phones.

However, she slowly melts and relents after being asked to help out an improv troupe, gradually becoming involved. She starts off as a disinterested and distant observer, but by the end of the film she is acting, directing and, finally, smiling. It’s a pretty wonderful character arc in which, although very cliched, an unwilling participant ends up being one of the heroes, and her relationship with the troupe’s director is an underused vehicle in her transformation.

The chemistry between Jokovic and Kiri is excellent and it drives much of the film, as is often the case when the plot is a little thin and an examination of characters takes center stage. With its yellow-brown apartment walls, parquet floors and a perpetually dreary Toronto sky, there's a sense of doom that can't be escaped. Films depicting immigrant struggles and how they're boxed in is common, and Easy Land doesn't really stand out. 

Easy Land gets two and a half stars out of four.