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Story About Us
...to be like other girls
To fit in in this glittering world...
In the past seven years, Margareta Jelić has been creating a series of animated movies that, for the most part, deal with the events and life of her main protagonist, Marta, who may or may not be her alter-ego. Marta and her friends live in cosy, pastel coloured ambients, they go out to nice restaurants, do picnics and throw parties. Their world is a replica of what fashion and lifestyle magazines offer us as a desirable model of life. However, just like in any good sitcom, or romantic comedy, Marta is not sure that she lives up to the expectations that this kind of lifestyle imposes. She even wonders whether she should put up an effort. Our confused and insecure heroine is trying to cope with all the possibilities laid before her, but she only manages to pose more questions.
Margareta’s latest work, Four Stories About Us, is an animated omnibus that has the same trait as some other brilliant movies - such as Speed, or Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia — namely, the title itself tells you all about the movie. These four short animated movies speak about the yearning to define ourselves or become someone else, to experience great love or great adventure, and at the same time fulfill all the expectations that the society placed before us; in a nutshell, they represent the sum of daily thoughts of anyone of us.
Margareta’s heroes do exactly what all of us do many times a day: they ask themselves what it would be like to be someone else. The notion of the proliferation of identity, of an almost unlimited freedom of choice, is one of the key themes of contemporary theory, art and popular culture. Appreciating a possible generalization, and even banalization of it, Margareta deals with this theme in a charmingly autoironic way, which takes away all the portentousness from her work. Her heroes are facing limitations in the field of unlimited freedom, and find ways of surmounting them, at least in their imagination. The first story might be offering a solution to Marta’s dilemma — should she really be ”like all other girls” or go for an adventure and uncertainty? This story shows us what it is like to be a fearless lion tamer, who, night in, night out, looks death in the eye and captivates the crowd. The second story, slightly gothic in its feeling, recounts Marta’s encounter with a mysterious stranger that could turn our main protagonist into a tragic romantic heroine. The conclusion of it is partly mysterious, partly disappointing. The third story speaks about a young man who looks at passers-by from a Parisian cafe; the scene resembles an ideal beginning to a 1950s Hollywood movie. The fourth story is a small autobiographical vignette, undoubtedly the most intimate part of the whole movie, and an opportunity to enjoy, alongside Margareta, a trivial, everyday situation.
It seems that the key question that Margareta Jelić considers in her work, whether she paints or makes animated movies, is: how do we know who we really are in a world that presents us with a seemingly infinite number of lifestyles? If we live up to the expectations of our environment, if we adopt all social and media standards, if we always use adequate hair shampoo and always choose the right dress for a party, does it all take away from us the opportunity to think about what we really want? If you took notice of the adventures of her heroes, the obvious answer is that to have a precise answer to that question means there simply is no choice. As long as you are in a position to opt for a new, unknown and uncertain road, you will be tempted to take it although you do not know what awaits you at its end. What if you ran away with the circus, or with a stranger from a train who calls you by the name of a literary heroine who ended badly. What if you decided to spend your life looking idly at the passers-by in a big foreign city? There are no answers to that; only more questions.
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