Article by Beatrice Bertino

Translation by Linh Carrara

Jenny (Emma Drogunova) and Bubbles (Paul Wollin) share a relationship where love and addiction are intertwined. Despite her pregnancy, Jenny cannot give up methamphetamine, which she uses daily with her partner. The situation is further precipitated when Jenny receives an order to execute a prison sentence, which forces her to report to a prison institution.

A sense of claustrophobia dominates the film. The close-up shots amplify the sense of suffocation and oppression, and the cramped spaces – both the couple’s apartment and the cell Jenny is locked in – render plastically a constraint that is as much physical as it is mental.

The violence of the actions is explicitly shown: the camera lingers on the woman’s abdomen before focusing on the pipe used to smoke methamphetamines. In the same way, childbirth is shown in detail, without sweetening the crudeness of the situation and without hiding the sight of blood.

Vena, Chiara Fleischhacker’s debut feature film, reflects on the cruelty of the separation between a mother and the child she gave birth to. On the other hand, Jenny’s human and existential condition inevitably leads the viewer to focus on the protagonist’s experience and need for love, on her need to find someone who can, or could, interrupt the vortex of wrong choices that drag her to the bottom. How can an adult woman save herself from the consequences of her actions?