REVIEW: ‘Faraway’ Is About Growing At Every Age

Faraway is a Netflix Original movie directed by Vanessa Jopp and written by Jane Ainscough and Alex Kendall about Zeynap (Naomi Krauss), a mother approaching 50 whose husband (Adnan Maral) is laughing more with a young staff at his restaurant than he ever has with her on the day of her mother’s funeral. When she finds a dead to a house in her mother’s native Croatia in a package left post-mortem, Zeynap drops everything, including her daughter Fia (Bahar Balci) to go claim that house for herself and turn it into an AirB&B.

Of course, when she arrives, she finds a man living in it already, Josip (Goran Bogdan). Long story short, he has a claim of his own to the property and from here two plots proceed: Zeynap’s attempt to sell the property and Josip’s attempt to keep her from doing so. Some of the details are a bit messy and become harder and harder to follow as more and more characters get twisted up in the saga. But the plot is also secondary to the journey Zeynap is on itself. She’s not there to worry about the house, really, she’s in Croatia to find herself again as her daughter is preparing to move to college, her husband loses interest in her, and she copes with her mother’s death.

As a story of self-discovery, the movie totally works. You don’t frequently get to enjoy a movie about a mother going through this on her own and from Zeynap grappling with the dissatisfaction she faces at home to the feelings she grows for Josip, to the connection she tries to forge with her late mother by way of living in the place where she grew up, it’s all that you can ask for from this type of movie. It also helps that the scenery is gorgeous on this Croatian Island. The soundtrack is very pop music-heavy, which plays into the plot in a reasonable way allegorically, but is also a bit out of place from time to time among the rustic, coastal scenery.

The romance budding between Zeynap and Josip is perfectly fine too. I don’t find myself enthralled by them. Josip is very one-dimensional for the most part as a somewhat aloof but also sincere middle-aged fellow, which leaves him attractive enough but not feeling like sparks are flying anywhere. These more positive aspects do get drowned out sometimes by the less interesting and over-saturated house plot. The various realty folks just talk too much and I didn’t follow perfectly who was there for what reason and the motives they had distinctly from one another.

The biggest criticism I have to this end is that Faraway should have ended twenty minutes earlier. There’s a moment where everything could have and maybe should have wrapped up neatly on a positive note when you realize there are still 20 minutes remaining. In those 20 minutes, everything previously confusing about the plot and characters surrounding the house come together at once and compound the confusion even further. It didn’t feel like it added nearly as much to the plot or each character’s growth as this extended amount of time ate up. Its one or two solid points about Zeynap finding happiness could have been moved elsewhere and the movie would have had the same impact in its conclusion.

Faraway is a satisfying middle-of-the-road drama of self-discovery with a tinge of romance. If you focus less on the plot vehicle and more on the moment-to-moment parts of Zeynap’s journey, you’ll get on just fine with this one.

Faraway is streaming now on Netflix.

Jason Flatt

Jason is the Sr. Editor at But Why Tho? and producer of the But Why Tho? Podcast. He’s usually writing about foreign films, Jewish media, and summer camp.