Sworn Virgin: Review

Besides being redolent, Roman director Laura Bispuri's debut feature "Sworn Virgin" (Italian: Vergine giurata) is an introspective drama film that is set within a bewitching subset of Albanian society, where the age-old tradition of women breaking out of their "prescribed" roles to take on another set of rigid gender roles to attain "perceived" freedom is as old as the snow-blasted Alpine hills. Bispuri utilises this unusual tradition to investigate the issues of gender identity, self-image, and cultural indoctrination.

Structured as a series of flashbacks, the story alternates from subsistence-level living in the snowy highlands of Albania to the greater freedom of a modern Italian city. Flashbacks, being an elegant device, trace the building and gradual dismantling of Hana's masculine alter ego in parallel. Hana (teenager played by

Drenica Selimaj), adopted into a family that has no sons, grows up in this archaic alpine landscape with Lila (teenager played by

Dajana Selimaj), who elopes with her beau to Italy to avoid a husband of her father's choosing. Hana stays back and makes up her mind to shoot a rifle and go where she pleases, all at the cost of cutting her hair, binding her breasts, and donning unattractive men's clothing.

Leaving home for the first time after 14 years as 'Mark', Hana (Alba Rohrawcher) falls on the mercy of the flummoxed Lila (Flolnja Kodheli), whose teenage daughter Jonida (Emily Ferratello) is peculiarly leery of the unheralded family arrival. It is Jonida who asks if Hana is a 'fag' or a 'cross-dressing lesbian' to which Hana keeps mum and it is here that she considers her femininity for the first time since adolescence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqepPRFB2MM&ab_channel=MovieclipsIndieMovieclipsIndie

Bispuri illustrates Hana/Mark's disarray about who s/he really is or

is becoming. Before the practice is discussed directly through the two-track

narrative, Bispuri allows her audience to piece together the specifics of Albania's "sworn virgin" tradition through observation and implication. One would agree that Rohrawcher gives a wondrously patient performance. While the actress's slight frame never looks wholly masculine, she still evokes real empathy for a

person forced to live in someone else's skin. It is not Lila, but Jonida who helps Mark take steps towards re-embracing his identity as a woman.

Bispuri does not rush to a sudden transformation. Rather, she chooses to make the viewer feel as immersed. After a somewhat meandering middle, the film builds to an ending that is simple, not to suggest that the journey is complete. Instead of being explicitly shown a full transformation, one is left at an ambiguous yet ultimately more grievous note of personal reconnection, of an individual finally on the path towards reconciling her conflicting human impulses. The film shows us how it is possible to live in exile in the world one knows best and feel at home in a place one has never been before.