Desire Lines Review
Desire Lines / Linije zelje (2025) Film Review from the 78th Annual Locarno Film Festival, a movie directed by Dane Komljen, written by Tanja Sljivar and Dane Komljen and starring Ivan Cuic, Petja Golec Horvat, Rok Juricic and Branka Katic.
Ambiguous, independent international films really intrigue me. Dane Komljen’s tense drama, Desire Lines, is one of the most fascinating movies of the year and it’s one that will most likely leave many audiences scratching their heads at the end only to think they may have discovered the “answers” shortly thereafter based on some of the dialogue that transpired throughout the picture. This film stars Ivan Cuic in a solid turn as a man named Branko who is about middle-aged and very protective of his brother. He sets out on a quest to follow his brother only for the viewer to discover that there’s much more going on here than meets the eye.
Branko receives a phone call from a female former classmate of his and she goes on about being physically injured and she basically suggests that not having a body to call home in the traditional way is like hell on Earth. She also doesn’t remember Branko having one brother let alone two, but we’ll leave that alone for now. A lot of the film consists of Branko wandering around. He starts out in the city and an opening establishing scene has him positioned with another man looking like they’re about to perform some kind of sexual acts for an audience of a few people. Nothing really is definitive, though. There’s also a part where Branko is either looking through night goggles or being viewed through them Predator-style. Either possibility could be the correct one.
As the landscapes become grassier and Branko strays from the city, he meets a few people. By this point, the movie is about forty-five minutes in and there are two people who communicate in their own unique ways who appear and they’re well played by Petja Golec Horvat and Rok Juricic. Another woman (terrifically portrayed by Branka Katic) connects with Branko for a bit as she details odd suggestions and mushrooms enter the equation at some point in time. Things get weirder when we get a scene where it feels like other people are around as well. However, the movie is very personal and is clearly about Branko and his current dilemma which appears to be a physical transformation of sorts. Well, maybe.
Towards the end, a younger version of Branko is seemingly shown which suggests that possibly Branko’s brother is really his younger self or…maybe not. Maybe that younger version is the brother. This movie doesn’t offer any easy answers to the complex questions it raises. Instead, Cuic’s performance is one that needs to be deciphered underneath a microscope, so to say, to peel back the layers of his multi-faceted character complete with something creepy coming out of his back at one point late in the picture. This film ends with something slimy or creepy going down his mouth, but the movie is all basically ambiguous and abstract in every sense of those two words.
Branko is caught between reality and a fantasy that makes for a slow-burning movie with plenty of nice shots and compelling ideas. The problem is that some of the movie plods along at a snail’s pace without enough scenes to fully develop the plot in a way to sustain audience interest. It felt a bit like the way last year’s film, April, did. April was featured at last year’s New York Film Festival and showed a woman going through emotional turmoil while the plot moved along at a leisurely pace. That film had interesting developments at every turn, though, and eventually caught the viewer up to speed. Desire Lines is too ambiguous as we’re never quite sure what definitively happens to bring Branko further along on his journey. April was ambiguous too, but a bit better put together.
Cuic bares it all and shows his naked body in a scene or two. These types of displays on-screen may suggest a really definitive answer to the question of whether or not his brother really exists, but also shed light on the desperation of the character, Branko, who is at the edge of sanity, so to say. If there’s hope for him, only the filmmaker, Komljen, really knows.
Desire Lines has plenty to offer viewers who can tolerate the movie’s occasionally frustrating pacing issues. Branka Katic is astonishingly good as she plays off Cuic’s gestures and interactions and the character Katic plays develops the fundamentals of the messages that are hidden within this picture. Physical bodies are places that human beings reside in, but in this world, it could be just a portal to experience the inner turmoil that derives from the loss of a loved one or the loss of our younger selves. I don’t know, definitively, what Desire Lines is really about, but what I got out of it was interesting enough to make me draw some sort of conclusions that make it a certain movie of interest for fans of thought-provoking existential dramas.
Rating: 7/10
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