“Finds a balance between intense emotions and deeply poetic depictions of the journey towards healing.”

“The further we go, the more is erased.”

These are amongst the final words we hear in Everything That’s Wrong with You, as the two protagonists – Maruša and Alja – walk hand-in-hand towards the oncoming tide. However, unlike everything that led up to it, this is one of the most purely hopeful moments in the film, since it represents genuine, undeniable growth. It makes for a perfect way to end this haunting exploration of the human mind. Written and directed by Urša Menart, the film follows the two protagonists as they come to know one another under difficult circumstances. Maruša has recently lost her mother to a terminal illness and has essentially been left to fend for herself, with only her dog for company, in the face of the relentless work to be done in the aftermath of losing a loved one. Alja is a young woman who lives abroad, and has been dealing with her own health issues. This has made her something of a minor celebrity on social media, with Maruša being one of her many followers. In a burst of spontaneity, the latter decides to travel to Germany to meet Alja, and the pair immediately discover that they are kindred spirits. However, when two equally damaged souls cross paths, do their struggles cancel each other out or just cause the sadness and suffering to compound? This question is one of many that Menart sets out to answer in Everything That’s Wrong with You, a moving portrait of two women trying to navigate a world which feels less like home with every passing day, desperate to find a sense of belonging that continues to evade them until they realize the root of their despair is closer to home than they expect.

Regardless of how many people across different disciplines try to claim that their perspective is the definitive one, there is no universal guide on how to grieve. Trauma is an intensely personal experience, and one that every individual handles differently, which can sometimes make finding the right help nearly impossible. This is the impetus that Menart uses to start the core conversations that guide Everything That’s Wrong with You. The film takes the simple premise of two young women who have suffered finding each other at an opportune moment and becoming each other’s closest confidante, drawing on the belief that navigating a difficult stretch is much easier when you have a like-minded companion on your side. What follows is a daunting, harrowing portrait of two characters attempting to make sense of their individual situations, somehow moving both backwards and forwards in their journey towards healing, and ultimately realizing that there is no easy path to recovery from past trauma. They begin to question whether there is any genuine hope of moving past these challenges, especially since they learn that no one can teach them the proper way to grieve. The director combines several different elements in the construction of this character study, which presents a vivid portrait of Alja and Maruša as their friendship grows, thoroughly demonstrating their individual and shared journeys, while also never providing the easy answers.

A glance at the subject matter would lead one to believe that Everything That’s Wrong with You is an entirely distressing, uncomfortable experience, since the film deals with intense topics and is not afraid to tackle themes that might be considered too disconcerting to be appealing. However, it would be foolish to reduce it to purely downbeat ideas, since we see some hopeful elements contained in the execution, particularly those surrounding the emotional content of the film. Menart is aware that exploring themes like trauma, grief and illness is by no means an easy task, especially when the story revolves around the symbiotic relationship between two young people who are both teetering dangerously close to collapse, and only escape it as a result of finding each other. The story reflects Menart’s ability to carefully bring these difficult ideas together without it becoming overwrought. The focus of Everything That’s Wrong with You is not solely to look at uncomfortable themes, but also to capture the disorientation of youth, and through a narrative that aims to understand the various nuances of what these characters are going through, it becomes a profoundly compassionate work, while also never being too idealistic about how easy it is to recover from certain experiences. The emotional weight of the story is offset by the tone, which is intense, but never to the point where it becomes overwhelming. For most of the film, we’re observing these two characters in their daily routine, only a stone’s throw away from complete emotional eruption, and when those moments do arrive quite late in the film they feel earned rather than being heavy-handed, which seems appropriate and realistic for the story being told.

As the quote at the start of this review states, Everything That’s Wrong with You springs from the idea of two characters who believe that they can outrun the past, and that the more they move forward, the less pain they will feel. Ultimately, we understand that this isn’t the case, and the film makes no effort to suggest otherwise. Instead, it builds upon a genuinely moving investigation of a growing friendship between two women stumbling their way through early adulthood, seeking guidance and support wherever they can find it, and dealing with their trauma in whatever way makes sense to them at the moment, proving that there are multiple avenues that one can travel on the healing journey. It’s a film that understands the psychology of these characters and what they’re having to endure, and how the friendship between Maruša and Alja is strengthened by their shared efforts to work through their past experiences, while also asking whether they’re truly helping one another, or simply enabling the unintentional acts of self-destruction from which they seem unable to escape. Despite its dense subject matter, Everything That’s Wrong with You does lean slightly towards optimism, albeit a realistic kind, acknowledging that the feelings of alienation and isolation from reality don’t disappear, but rather become part of our emotional inventory, perhaps transitioning from a sharp pain to a dull discomfort as time progresses. Everything That’s Wrong with You finds a balance between intense emotions and deeply poetic depictions of the journey towards healing, a path that is navigable with the right approach, regardless of the obstacles that stand in the way and the fact that there may never be a well-defined destination.