In the first scene we are in a pet store and meet Rommy (Rozmarína Willems) and her mother. Her mother is in the process of choosing a budgie. In the next scene, they both walk home with a lemon yellow parakeet and its cage. Arriving at the front door, a boy stands there and asks “Did you find him again?”, but Rommy is silent. Then he gets on his bike and rides away. Her mother comments on the whole thing with a “See, he didn’t know the difference”.
The bird including the cage finally finds its place in the children’s room and when the mother asks what she wants to call the bird, Rommy replies with a rather incidental “Nothing”. At the latest now it is probably clear, it is not Rommy’s first bird that sits there and she misses her old bird, which she had baptized Mimi.
When her best friend Cypko (Cyprián Šulej) visits her, he tells her that the bird that flew out of two parakeets always comes back because the other bird calls it.
And so the plan is born that Rommy sneaks out of the apartment together with the birdcage to go in search of Mimi in the nearby forest.
On this search Mimi meets quite different people who walk there in the forest, exist imaginary or live in a quite free lifestyle in self-made huts. But no matter who she meets, in the end no one really helps her or she refuses help, but she learns very different life stories. During one of her last encounters with an old woman who is reminiscing in the forest, Rommy forgets where she left her cage. A woman notices this and goes back the way together with her. She rediscovers the place where she left the bird, but there is no trace of the bird, which she has since named “Little Salad”. The woman is very sure who has taken the animal into care and in fact is searched animal there, however, the area is guarded by a larger dog and from the owner is missing any trace. Rommy tries with various ideas to calm the vigilant animal, because her new bird now she does not want to lose.
Conclusion:
Mimi was unfortunately the only feature film this year with an age recommendation from 5 years, which is somehow quite weak for a section dedicated to children’s and youth films in two subsections (Kplus and 14plus).
But let’s get to the actual film. Mimi is a rather quiet film that follows the protagonist quite closely in her search for the budgie that has flown away. This is a somewhat shaky affair at times, but keeps within limits so far. With the different people that Rommy meets during her search, I was often not quite clear what meaning these people now have or what the message should be for the search for her bird. Often Rommy simply refused the help of the adults or was left standing with the words “someone will take care of you in a minute” and then these people just disappeared or were just busy with themselves. Maybe this is a characteristic of the Slovaks? Maybe they just wanted to show that Rommy is strong enough to do it all by herself, but strangely enough they don’t really trust her towards the end of the film. She has many ideas and always starts an attempt to solve the problem, but fails every time and so it is her best friend and two strange children who stand by her side. Together you are stronger than alone, could be the message, but then the paths of all separate again and we see only Rommy and Cypko in the freeze frame.
Unfortunately, Mimi could not really pick me up and reminds me too much of other similar contributions that were already shown at the Berlinale. First and foremost, I often had to think of Allons enfants (Cleo & Paul) from 2018, which I liked better back then and also got an honorable mention from the International Jury.
More about the movie:
https://www.berlinale.de/en/2023/programme/202309085.html
Trailer or film clip:
