Woman on board – Newspaper Kommersant No. 1 (7446) of 01/09/2023

Lily and the Sea (Grand Marin) is a full-length directorial debut of Russian-French actress Dinara Drukarova. Julia Shagelman considers the desire of the main character of the film to give up everything and run away to the ends of the world is quite understandable.

A fragile woman in a shabby leather jacket goes to the seashore. She seems to have come out of nowhere and come to nowhere – to a small fishing village where passers-by are rare, and all the small local population plus hired workers, sailors and fishermen, gather in the evenings in a single shabby bar. The action takes place in Iceland, but the local scenery is far from postcard views of geysers, fjords and northern lights. Pale colors, bare wastelands, rusted ships, and even the sea does not look romantic, but everyday – they go there to work, and not to seek adventure.

The main character (Dinara Drukarova) is also looking for a job, we will soon find out her name – Lily, but nothing more. She has no biography, no past, the reasons why she ended up in this point in time and space remain unclear until the end of the film. She speaks English and French, both with an accent that adds to the impression of a stranger whose home is somewhere far away, if she ever had one. Lily wants to get a job on a fishing boat, but the captains are skeptical about her gender and lack of experience, and the fact that she does not have the necessary documents puts an end to all “interviews”. She has to spend the night on the shore in a sleeping bag, but the next day she stubbornly continues her search.

Finally, there is a French-speaking captain named Jan (Sam Lauwijk), who takes a stranger into his crew and immediately gives her the nickname Sparrow. So Lily joins a small international all-male crew where no one is particularly interested in her story, and by and large, and herself. Gender dynamics are also left out – the conditions at sea are equally harsh for everyone. First of all, professional skills and dexterity are valued here, and no one is going to give discounts to the only woman in the team, as well as pester her with attention. In general, the team immediately accepts Lili, with the exception of only Jude (Bjorn Hlinur Haraldsson), who even takes the bed of her choice, so she has to sleep with another newcomer (Dylan Robert) on the floor in some kind of back room.

If Lily had any illusions about life on the high seas (which one can also only guess about, because they don’t talk much in the film), then reality quickly dispels them. It’s wet, cold, the work is hard and more like survival. But Lily does not complain, trying to prove to the captain and colleagues that she deserves to be one of them, and when she injures her hand, she is most worried that she will no longer be taken on board. Yang respects her and even offers a “promotion” instead of another crew member, whom he kicks out for drunkenness, and at the same time marriage (exclusively in order to straighten her visa, of course), which Lily easily and without hesitation refuses.

The script of the film is based on Catherine Poulin’s autobiographical book Woman in the Sea, which tells about the author’s life in Alaska. But for Dinara Drukarova, who left Russia for France at the age of 20 and started her acting career there again, this is clearly a very personal story in which the main theme is an escape into the unknown and the rejection of the traditional roles that society offers a woman. Her heroine consistently rejects everything that can tie her to one place or person, and, apparently, she has been doing this for a long time and repeats it often enough that this choice no longer raises any doubts. Even when Lily’s relationship with Jude follows a predictable path from enemies to lovers, their ending is unexpected: here the man wants to finally settle down and live a quiet life, and the woman runs away again, not giving a chance to form bonds that could keep her. The symbol and embodiment of freedom from them, which, despite everything, is still not easy, but requires everyday overcoming, is the sea – a technique, of course, not the most original, but invariably effective.