Love and Other Crimes (2008)

As someone else (reviewer) stated here too, after "Klopka" comes this gem of Serbian cinema. A slow moving love drama, that's not really trying to blend in.While you might think or expect conventional love drama fare, you will be treated to somewhat more complex (dare I say even more philosophical)! As stated in the summary line it won't be to anyone's taste, especially if you're more in the blockbuster area, then this won't be your cup of tea. Well I liked it and you will too, if you let yourself into the characters and don't mind one song (Besame...) being repeated a few times in the movie ...

Perhaps I am missing something from this movie. I sat in front of 6 Serbians who laughed and hooted throughout the movie. Another couple of reviews (on this site) indicate "What on earth is happening in Serbian film and how can we seem MORE?". I say, "What on earth is happening in Serbian films and where is the closest exit so I can leave".I kept noticing a bunch of disconnects throughout the movie which irritated me. Milutin was fond of Besa me Mucho, supposedly because it reminded him of a previous love. This is understandable...However, his daughter sings this song often also. Not sure why the daughter sings this song. Perhaps she sings this song to forge a connection to her mobster dad? And why is she chronically depressed and always on the verge of jumping off a building? Is this due to her living in this dismal environment. This theme is never explored or developed.Stansilav also sings Besa Me Mucho. Why? Is it that this song evokes memories of a happier time? But this happier time was 14 years ago which certainly was no happy time in Serbia as this was during the war. There is a comment late in the movie (from Milutin's old love) that Stanislav looks like Milutin. This seems to intimate that Stanislav is Multin's son. If so, then Stanislav's mother is also Milutin's ex-lover. It is all so very convoluted.Also, don't know why Milutin left this supposed love of his life (that we see later in the movie) to marry someone else (the mother of his daughter). Was the someone else pregnant? We never know why he left this grand love to take up with this other woman. Perhaps this was meant to point out we often don't know the best parts of our lives until they are in the rear view mirror.Stanislav and Anica are a little more interesting, but again, Stanislav has been in love with this woman for 14 years supposedly for not much more than watching her nice breasts and seeing her romp in the concrete jungle courtyard in year's past. Oh yes, he also saw her naked body years ago after she had made love to some guy (who then got up and left). She hit the exiting lover over the head with a ladle and Stanislav thought this was engaging. Yes, don't we all hold fond/erotic thoughts of the opposite sex..especially if we are lucky enough to view them nude hitting a lover over the head with a kitchen utensil? These activities from Anica are certainly enough to peak a teenage boy's fancy, but not enough to sustain a love for 14 years.The end is predictable. Milutin has to go (he is dying) and Stanislav gets killed. Yawn, yawn, snooze, snooze. I would cross this off my list of "must-see movies".

Serbian cinema is again at the tops! This was a love story of the kind nobody else would think to put on screen. Yet it is so much more closer to those (un)happening in reality. Very sad and very deep and very simple film. Just a day of a few people in their late youth, in a Belgrade suburb of tower blocks, illustrates the throes of an entire generation caught in the postcommunist period (or shall I say, the postcommunist abyss). Leaving everything behind and starting a new life somewhere else is not as easy as we know it from the movies. Staying, on the other hand, is a limbo. But when your heart is so kind, is ever a new beginning possible?'Besa me mucho' runs a hundred times, it is the only soundtrack. The grey concrete blocks are unexpectedly beautiful, it is the only landscape. The petty post-communist gangsters are confusingly human and sympathetic, it is the main characters.Stefan Arsenijevic fairly got the director's award of the 2008 Sofia Film Festival 'for the humanity and lyricism of his style'. The other Serbian entry, 'Hadersfild', was also a very powerful film.

You may have seen my raves over Klopka from last year's Berlinale, but this year's offering was Love and Other Crimes (Ljubav i Drugi Zlocini in the original Serbian). I got excited the moment the film started rolling and I saw it starred Klopka's haunting Anica Dobra. At the end I stood up and asked, "What on earth is happening in Serbian film and how can we see MORE?" As an American, I can't help viewing the societal collapses endemic to Eastern Europe as the stimulus behind this post-modern film noir. But the director surprised me by answering my query in this vein with a note of optimism. Sure, of course, the end of open warfare is a definite positive, but to then see your society descend into the grips of common criminals in the inexorable name of capitalism, can hardly be optimistic!? I left the theater with the feeling that this particular young director had somehow surpassed himself, overreached his inherent ability. How wonderful when this is in service to art, and with the endlessly expressive face of Dobra, it is not hard to imagine this happening. Then, in further researching the film, I see a common thread -- Srdjan Koljevic, the co-writer -- and ask myself if perhaps he is the one to watch?