Perla: a quietly subversive portrayal of motherhood

• Reviewed from the 2025 International Film Festival Rotterdam

“You’ve built your life at my expense.” These words, spoken to the title character at a crucial moment, outline the question at the heart of Perla, Alexandra Makarova’s impressive second feature. 

In the case of Perla (Rebeka Poláková), the cost of her life has fallen on Andrej (Noel Czuczor), the ex-lover left behind when she fled communist Czechoslovakia while pregnant. More than a decade later, in 1980s Vienna, Perla is working as an artist and living comfortably with her daughter Julia, a talented pianist and her kindly partner Josef (Simon Schwarz). Then one day, a call shatters Perla’s tranquillity. Andrej has been released from prison, and he wants to see his daughter. Perla reluctantly embarks on a dangerous journey back behind the iron curtain, into long buried memories. 

Perla is a stylish film, shot handsomely by George Weiss, which captures both Austria’s glossy prosperity and Czechoslovakia’s chilly austerity in a parade of mirrors, gleaming dark wood and pale, haunted faces. But beneath the pristine surface, lies a roiling, jagged energy, which, like the grit at the heart of an oyster, elevates the material beyond the sombre paranoia of most Cold War historical drama to something more primal.  

Poláková’s intense performance draws out the central character’s contradictions, and we soon realise that Perla’s impulsivity stems from deep trauma. In one mesmeric scene, Perla stuffs her face uncontrollably on local delicacies in a Czechoslovakian diner, only stopping when disgusted customers call the police. Perla’s conflicted relationship to her birth country bubbles uncontrollably to the surface in a collision of hunger, longing and fury.  

Reflecting the fractured nature of Perla’s traumatised memories, the film’s most dramatic moments are often obscured – like the attack that happens just off camera at the far side of the frame, or the crucial conversation which takes place unheard beneath an orchestral performance. As a result, the moments of drama and violence which Makarová does choose to depict are shocking and memorable.  

Hovering over the whole film is a quietly subversive portrayal of motherhood. Perla is more like a sister than her mother to Julia, making her laugh with silly voices and irritating her by speaking Slovak on the train. She loves her daughter, but does she love her enough, and in the “right” way? In an early scene, Perla wheedles with the piano teacher because she doesn’t want to pay for Julia’s lessons and getting a second job would mean sacrificing her own artistic ambitions for her daughter’s. Perla is expected to enable her daughter to thrive at her expense, but is this expectation reasonable? Makarová refuses sentimental answers, a resolve which makes this disquieting film all the more powerful.