previously published on Cineuropa
The year has started
promisingly for audience-friendly Croatian cinema. After a decent
theatrical run for Vinko Brešan's satirical
political drama What a Country!, the next in line is a
zombie comedy penned and helmed by first-timer Predrag
Ličina, entitled The Last Serb in Croatia. The
film opened nationally in Croatia on 28 February, one day ahead of
its festival premiere in Serbia, at the Belgrade International Film
Festival FEST. Chances are it will be at least a minor hit in both
countries, as well as in the wider region of the former Yugoslavia.
It is the near future,
seven years after the total bankruptcy of Croatia. The population has
fallen to 2.5 million, while class differences have become more
pronounced. A minority of well-to-do citizens can enjoy the perks of
the high life, while the majority of the people have to rummage
around in the garbage and beg on the streets just to survive.
Nevertheless, they all get to "enjoy" a series of domestic
blockbuster superhero films entitled Task: Impossible,
revolving around the adventures of national(istic) heroine Hrvojka
Horvat (Serbian actress Hristina Popović) and her
superior, called The Leader, as well as live radio reports by DJ
Carrot (the voice of Rene Bitorajac).
When we meet our
unlikely hero, Mićo (Krešimir Mikić), it seems he
is on top of this dog-eat-dog world, as he’s filthy-rich and
suitably cocky. Soon enough, after the outbreak of an epidemic, he is
bitten by his zombified date, so he ends up in a hospital where he
meets his idol, Hrvojka – or actually, jaded actress Franka Anić,
who plays the role of Hrvojka – a neo-Nazi skinhead thug called
Maks (Dado Ćosić) and a mysterious businesswoman
called Vesna (rising star Tihana Lazović). They all
decide to go to the countryside near the Bosnian border, where they
believe they have a better chance of survival.
However, strangely, Mićo
has not started turning yet, even though he was bitten hours ago. The
answer to the mystery will come to light soon enough, when the gang
reaches a village inhabited by a Serbian-minority family. It turns
out that Serbs, Mićo included, are somehow immune to the virus. Our
heroes still cannot get out of the country, which is surrounded by a
wire fence, but they manage to reach a refugee camp operated by a
Slovenian doctor called Jana (Judita Franković). In
the meantime, an intervention team located in Sweden, consisting of a
trigger-happy American general (a cameo by Sergej
Trifunović), an anti-globalist activist (Croatian pop star
Severina) and a scientist, is tasked with finding a
cure...
Aside from the part
about looking for a solution and the popular anti-globalist "water
is the greatest treasure of all" discourse, the plot is fairly
standard for movies of this ilk and is not Ličina's primary focus.
It is merely a framework for a series of clever and provocative
observations on national stereotypes and the nationalistic sentiments
of the peoples of the former Yugoslavia. Ličina tries to achieve
this with rapid-fire verbal and visual jokes that do not always hit
the mark, even among a well-informed audience, because they sometimes
demand some specific knowledge of a certain sub-culture, which is to
be expected from a director with a background in music videos. The
film starts promisingly, but the pace drops towards the end, though
not dramatically. The star-studded cast helps a lot, as do the simple
make-up and the visual effects by Miroslav Lakobrija,
but the visual identity of the film is caught between its virtually
no-budget means and its ambitious goals, as it clearly aspires to be
more like contemporary genre cinema from Western Europe and the USA.
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