Directed by Srdjan Spasojevic
Written by Aleksandar Radivojević, Srđan Dragojević , Marija Stanošević
Starring Sergej Trifunović, Srđan Todorović
Music by Sky Wikluh
Cinematography Nemanja Jovanov
Running time 110 minutes
Language Serbian, English subtitles
'A Serbian Film' is as the title suggests a movie set in Serbia. This film follows the story of a fictitious upper middle-class family in which the father is enticed out of his rather early retirement for a single contract position that pays an unmentioned (but hinted at being really large) amount of money. The deal is too good to pass up and our hero accepts the job in order to work very briefly while scoring enough dough to re-retire for realsies this time and have his family be super rich forever.
Basically he's a really swell guy and his wife and kid adore him. And why shouldn't they? He's pretty tops. He's decided to go back for one last bit of work so they can live it up Serbian style which is pretty pimpin' so I assume with my limited knowledge of what things in that country(?) might be like.
This film really filled my foreign film quota for 2011. I'm going to go ahead and check that off my list of things to accomplish this year, I'm so productive. The next time an acquaintance who fancies him/herself an advanced appreciator of the arts, media & culture based on the fact that this person owns a copy of Amélie on VHS and watches Margaret and David go to The Movies starts to gurgle and gag on about a new film that I simply must see because it's so clever and so foreign and I might not get it but that's to be expected I'll say "sorry were you talking to me? I wasn't paying attention because I have a personality and need not struggle for the attention of others” followed by "yes I have seen a foreign film recently”. And I wouldn't be lying. Let's move on.
This film goes through the motions of being a foreign film complete with a lack of story contrasted against decent production values particularly in this case fairly interesting cinematography. Lazy writing though – it's all over the place. Probably due to the several writers trying and then failing to collaborate on a single vision. Yeah, that's probably the problem with this one. At several points you'll think things like "Why is this happening?" and "that last scene had nothing to do with anything" which in a way is the most entertaining thing about this movie.
Should you watch this film? Sure, why not. I don't care. You've probably read lots of horrible things about it. Seriously though, at the end of the day isn't all that art that you like so much essentially someone being violated by someone else behind subtitles to a dub step score? Yes, it really is, Yes even Amelie and this is no different. 2 stars.
Images screengrabbed from trailer, buy this thing on blu ray from Amazon
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