BLACK CAT, WHITE CAT (57)

Directed by: Emir Kusturica

Starring: Severdan Bajram, Florijan Ajdini, Srdjan Todorovic

The Pitch: Comic tensions between rival families of Yugoslav Gypsies.

Theo Sez: Lively, large-parties-welcome Balkan hoedown, hiding a surprisingly sour, disillusioned worldview. The presence (in a small part) of the grandmother from TIME OF THE GYPSIES is a reminder of the vast distance between the two films - partly because these are now comic gypsies (haggling, babbling, drinking and dancing, falling into toilets and out of hammocks, whacking their kids then immediately kissing them), but mostly because the whole fabric of Gypsy culture seems to have rotted away here : the clan, however raucous and exasperating, used to be something to fall back on, a protection from the world, but now greed has taken over - friends are betrayed, traditions (like the brother's obligation to arrange a marriage for his younger sister) are abused, and the only "Happy End" available to our young hero is to take off and never look back. In fact, despite Kusturica's stated aim of making a wholly apolitical movie, "from the earth", it's almost irresistible to see it as an allegory for the ruined place that is post-war Yugoslavia - a pariah state on the fringes of Europe, watching civilisation sail by from its dingy river-bank, feeding on fractured pop-culture (Rambo, CASABLANCA), home to war criminals and ubiquitous goons with machine-guns, lost to depressed nihilism and criminality ; all of which is undoubtedly more interesting to think about than the film's "earthy" surface, a procession of "earthy" detail - dogs rutting, geese honking, a pig eating a car, gold teeth, brass bands, village fairs. There's an entertaining irreverence to it, and a playful quality (UNDERGROUND's Miki Manojlovic, cameoing as a goofy priest, gets billed in the credits as "Father Miki Manojlovic"), not to mention a tender love scene in a field of sunflowers and possibly the first soundtrack use of a jew's-harp since Sergio Leone ; but you can't help wishing Kusturica would leave the boisterous sub-Fellini Europap to lesser lights, and get back to being lyrical and visionary.