Sworn Virgin

Cutting between present, childhood, and recent past, Bispuri constructs a subtle, richly emotional collage.

Bispuri’s feature debut makes a powerful statement about the suffocation that can come with gender norms, and about the double-edged sword of gender performance.

Skipping deftly between time frames while keeping her camera close to her protagonist — played with tremulous understatement by the remarkable actress Alba Rohrwacher — Bispuri traces a journey of delicate interior shifts and reversals.

A poignant study of gender politics enshrined within an anthropologically fascinating drama.

[A] sensitive, deliberate debut feature.

It feels like every script-reader in the Italian-Swiss-German-Albanian-Kosovo coproduction cut out a line of dialogue in each scene, leaving behind an irritating silence and an enigmatic puzzle for the audience to second-guess.

Although Ms. Rohrwacher captures Mark’s uncertain, shifting physicality, the movie doesn’t always succeed in getting inside the character’s head.