During the Croatian War of Independence, Mihajlo, a Serb paramilitary, shot Ana's mother and grandmother at her home in Sunja, Banija, and later raped her. Five years later, Ana lives in Zagreb. At a cafe, she seems to recognize her tormentor, Mihajlo. She hides in her apartment and calls the police, Inspector Kovač. She also visits her sick father in a hospital, a war veteran. Ana admits to her boyfriend, Ivan, that she was raped and had an abortion. On the street, Mihajlo and his friend attack Ana, but Ivan saves her, so they kidnap him and leave his corpse near a bridge. Ana steals Kovač's gun and goes to the coastline to visit her relative. Mihajlo attacks her on the boat in the sea, but she shoots him with a harpoon, and Kovač shoots him additionally with a gun.
The director Snjezana Tribuson made an interesting combination of the thriller genre blended with the topic of local Croatian War of Independence in "Recognition", in which the heroine recognizes her tormentor from the war on the street. While in Panahi's similarly-themed movie "It Was Just an Accident" the protagonist actually does something proactive against his tormentor, here the heroine Ana (Natasa Dorcic) is a too passive victim who spends most of the movie just hiding in her apartment, except for the finale when she finally develops more resourcefulness. Tribuson is able to build up a good mood in the first half, with several neat tricks involving "false alarms"—for instance, we see the antagonist Mihajlo walking towards the camera, and then in the next scene a POV shot of camera approaching Ana sitting on a bench in the park, as someone puts her arm around her, and she is scared, but it just turns out to be her boyfriend, Ivan (Goran Visnjic). Another good, albeit disturbing moment is the one where Ivan is making love to Ana in bed, and there is a match cut of her remembering Mihajlo raping her in the forest, in the same position. The movie suffers from a too slow pacing, as there is too many empty walks instead of the authors trying to enrich it with more ideas and creativity, yet the finale is short and effective, and the setting and concept give it weight.
Grade:++
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