2011’s gross out movie du jour, a profoundly vile and repellent
compendium of sexual sadism with political overtones. Well made, but the
potential audience is limited, to say the least!
The Package
To call 2010’s A SERBIAN FILM (SRPSKI FILM)
controversial would be an understatement. Right now it’s barely a year
old yet is already banned in several countries and the focus of a high
profile lawsuit in its native land. Edited versions were released in the
US, the UK and Australia, and it’s doubtful the film will ever play in
its intended form in any of those countries.
The Story
Porn star Milos has retired from the business to spend
time with his wife and young son. One day he gets a proposition to star
in a new avant-garde production for an outrageous sum of money. Milos is
told nothing about the film in advance; as outlined by Vukmir, the
film’s pretentious director, Milos will have to wear an earpiece through
which he’ll receive instructions on what to do. Milos is understandably
apprehensive about the offer, but goes through with it anyway.
The first day’s filming sees Milos led to a hospital
for abandoned children where he witnesses a violent confrontation
between a teenage girl and her mother; later he gets sucked off by a
sexy nurse while watching videos of girls eating ice cream bars. The
following day’s filming is more sadistic, with Milos getting his cock
bitten during fellatio by a whore who Vukmir encourages Milos to beat
up, all in plain view of a teen girl seated nearby.
Milos decides he’s had enough, and informs Vukmir he’s
quitting the production. In an inexplicable effort to convince Milos to
stay, Vukmir screens an excerpt from a new kind of film he’s working on:
newborn porn! From there things really get weird...
Milos awakens in his home, covered in blood. Attempting
to piece together what brought him to this state, he heads back to
Vukmir’s mansion, assailed by dark visions involving rape and
unbelievable brutality. Milos discovers a pile of videos, which show
that he was injected with some kind of fuck drug by Vukmir that turned
Milos into a depraved psychopath who performed several unspeakable acts
of sexual sadism…acts that come to involve his own wife and son.
The Direction
For a low budget Serbian film to create as much trouble
as this one has, its makers must be doing something right. Director
Srdjan Spasojevic claims the film is a political allegory about life in
Serbia; the film’s most notorious scene, depicting a newborn infant
pulled from its mother’s womb and fucked (all fake of course, and one of
the few instances in which Spasojevic shows restraint), is apparently
meant to symbolize what Serbians experience at the hands of their
leaders.
The film has the look of a trashy straight-to-video
gorefest, which actually intensifies its impact. In many respects a
trashy straight-to-video gorefest is exactly what it is, yet with a
genuinely envelope-pushing--nay, shredding--succession of
atrocities that place it in a category of its own.
Srdjan Spasojevic’s considerable talent is evident in
the nerve-jangling mood of horrific anticipation suffusing the early
scenes, and the intensity is maintained as the proceedings grow
increasingly gruesome. Whether Spasojevic is justified in going as far
as he does remains an open question. I’ll say this for the film: it is
very likely the last word in so-called torture porn, as after A SERBIAN
FILM there really aren’t many taboos left to shatter.
Vital Statistics
A SERBIAN FILM (SRPSKI FILM)
Contrafilm
Director: Srdjan Spasojevic
Producer: Srdjan Spasojevic
Screenplay: Aleksandar Radivojevil, Srdjan Spasojevic
Cinematography: Nemanja Jovanov
Editing: Darko Simic
Cast: Srdjan Todorovic, Sergej Trifunovic, Jelena Gavrilovic, Katarina
Zutic, Slobodan Bestic, Ana Sakic, Lena Bogdanovic, Luka Mijatovic,
Andela Nenadovic
