Bosnian writer-director Una Gunjak’s directorial debut Excursion is a bit of a puzzle. Like Maria in The Sound Of Music everyone wonders how to solve a problem like Iman (Asja Zara Lagumdzija) in Excursion. Except that the problem is too grave to be given the singing and dancing treatment.
The impish naïve Iman is a 15-year-old child-woman, a hybridised hyphenated product of a society in flux. The purdah may not be mandatory. But the ultra-conservatism remains. Mindsets don’t change even if more ostensibly do. Given the radicalism all around her, Iman’s leap into an imagined sexual freedom is not only radical, it is also questionable.
When during a truth or dare session with her friends, Iman “confesses” that she has had sex with a boy, she gets what she wants: instant celebrity status among her friends and peers. This is a very sly slanted yet sharp dig at the cult of recognition where notoriety is seen as a cousin to fame.
Iman plays her cards close to her heart. It is an awfully dangerous lie in a closed unforgiving community. The lie opens up a can of worms. Curiously, Iman seems to enjoy the attention that her scandalous lie gives her. In a sense, the innocence of a child-woman who revels in her scandalous fantasy is an indication of which way social media is driving the world.
Ironically the social media and smartphone tattle are not shown to be the decisive factors in the scandal that broke loose in the small conservative Bosnian community. It is the idle gossip kind of backroom chatter that underpins the mores of this semi-formed conservative-liberal community where scandal and fame are close cousins.
While Iman and her friends play with fire (so to speak) their parents discuss the pros and cons of letting their pubescent children go on a school trip, right after seven girls returned pregnant from a similar trip.
There is a sense of casual unhysterical leisure, a spot of mischief, in the storytelling, as if Iman’s double deception (she first pretends to have had sex and then compounds the lie by pretending to be pregnant) is not to be judged as scandals but as a mirror of a society that is rapidly changing, and what can the elders do about it?
Eventually, Iman’s lies begin to seem a tad annoying. Why does she not comprehend the consequences of her scandalous conduct? The best most non-negotiable moments in this treatise on maladroit intentions come toward the end when Iman faces the consequences of her action. By then it is too late.
There is a chilling sequence when a bunch of ruffians try to break down the door of the school loo with Iman inside. The fun is over. Towards the end, Iman’s mother (Maja Izetbegović) sits Iman down for a serious tete-a-tete. Wonder what took her so long!