Mermaid
My friend just got back from Sundance and was raving about a movie called Mermaid. The story centers on Alisa (Mariya Shalayeva), a young girl living with her mother and grandmother. When Alisa is a child, she longs to be a ballerina and for her father, a sailor who had a one-night-stand with Alisa’s mother (Mariya Sokova) to return to them. Alisa begins to get used to disappointment though and learns to go with the flow. What sets her apart from normal people is her ability to make wishes come true. This occasionally backfires, causing hurricanes and house fires. In the end though, Alisa always means well and is really just looking to be loved. Unfortunately, her odd nature (and the fact that she decides to stop speaking for about a decade) causes her to be somewhat of a loner. One day when she’s 18 years old, she rescues a man after he tries to kill himself and shortly afterwards, falls in love with him. The problem is, aside from hiring her to clean his apartment; he barely knows she’s alive. Sadly, this is the case with almost everyone in Alisa’s life. They know she’s there but she doesn’t really matter to them.
