As movie opens Divko, a cranky old man, is driving
through some countryside whilst arguing with Azra a pretty young girl who is
trying to deal with a cat who is in a basket on her lap and continually
throwing up. Things are not what they initially seem as the girl is not his
daughter but his pretty new trophy fiancé, and the real love of his life is the
cat.
The year is 1991, the place is Bosnia-Herzegovina on the
brink of war and Divko is returning home after a 20-year exile in Germany to
re-claim his house and his son and get a divorce from the wife he had abruptly
abandoned. There is one obstacle in his
plan but the fact that his wife still lives in the house is easily resolved by
his cousin. whose ascent to Mayor he has funded, and who now uses his official power
to have the wife evicted.
In this wonderful black comedy, which teeters on being
a farce at times, Divko proves that throwing huge amounts of money around can
buy you anything in a town that is in such disarray. After kicking his wife out of her home, he
buys up the hairdressing salon where she works, and has almost the entire
population looking out for his cat when it goes missing in the hope of netting
the substantial reward.
To be honest you have to know a tad more about the
complexities of how the former Yugoslavia fell apart than most of us know to
get the full drift of all the different factions of militia, and who is actually
fighting whom and for what. But that
said the human element of wanting to avoid politics that people simply could
not relate too and did not want to be a part of any more, made their wish to
escape to a neighboring country to sit it out for the duration, seem like a really good idea. And there were some interesting side plots too, such as Martin losing
his virginity to his new stepmom, which occasionally detracted one slightly
from the impeding war.
The ending however is very sweet, and totally
unexpected, and rounded off this very human take on a very difficult period
before Serbia was born.
Written and directed by Danuis Tanovic who won the
Best Foreign Language Picture Oscar for ‘No Mans-Land’ in 2002. And starring Miki Manojloviic with his perfect hangdog
face as Divko (you may recognize Mr Manojloviic from the wee but wonderful ‘Irena Palm’
where he played Marianne Faithful’s
boss in the sex-shop)
P.
S. I’m on a ‘circus’ movie theme
right now, but the one in this is more of a carousel and is only featured in
the very last shot. Very misleading
title!
★★★★★★★★
★★★★★★★★
