Schöne tote Mädchen

Fine mrtve djevojke or Fine Dead Girls is a really promising movie showing talent of a young director Dalibor Matanic. In some ways it is a very accurate picture of the Croatian society today. In the spotlight we see two girls (Olga Pakalovic and Nina Violic) that are looking not only for the apartment to live in, but also a place where they could lead their lives as they want to. People that they meet, and the events that occur are as dark as realistic. The palette of characters is very interesting, although I was very pleased with the performance of Inge Appelt who played the old woman. A fine dose of humor is very well mixed with scenes of brutality. Definitely a good movie that i would recommend to anyone.

This movie gets my 7/10. It's not a masterpiece, but it still is a very good movie and I would recommend anyone to see it. The topic of intolerance towards "other" sexualities has been dwelled on for a while, but this is somewhat of an unique perspective, since it comes from Croatia.

The story about two lesbians who fall victims of intolerance blends rather nicely with other generalized xenophobic or just plain "weird" traits of the local society. E.g. one of the characters beats his wife and seems to hate everything that's Serbian, so a separate story could probably be told about that family.

Acting is good, but not perfect. It seems to me that many Croatian actors act very conservatively (you have a feeling that they are uncomfortable swearing, or that they just came out of theater where they did Shakespeare). But, it doesn't ruin the movie, it's still very good.

I haven't seen any Croatian film made since the beginning of war. It's funny to see actors we used to know ten or fifteen years older now.

In this film I liked the production - camera, photography and editing are really professional - you wouldn't say it was made on Balkans. Acting is mostly OK as well.

On the other side, the directing and the story are pretty weak. Everything seems like one dark documentary (yes we know the Balkan really looks like that, and people are really like that). No artistic moments, no metaphors, whole story is explicitly presented, and I dislike this way of movie making. That's why the movie was boring to me, both the story and the way it will be told is predictable.

Though, film-making technique is really good and I guess Croatia can make some really good movies, this one is on the right way.

Iva and Maria, a young lesbian pair, rent a favorable, nice dwelling in a less good area of Zagreb, Croatia. But unfortunately, included in the rent are the neighbors, the neighbors from hell. The curious landlady, foreigners flogging nationalists, an old man, who live with his dead wife and a man, who beat his wife regularly, are just one part of this neighbourhood. When one of the neighbors falls in love with Iva, the situation escalates - with the result of three dead people at the end. This is a story about the fight for tolerance and the own life, full of psychological shock effects and colorful pictures about suburban living in the capital of Croatia.

Suffocated life. Intolerance. Free-living. Love and love deviations. Masses of suffocated people walking through streets, shopping in big supermarkets.

Fine mrtve djevojke was the Golden Arena winner(best movie, best directing, best production...) in 2002 at the Croatian Pula Film Festival and the best Croatian movie of the same year.

8/10

This is 'a story in a story movie'. A woman is telling a story from a few years ago to a policeman because her son is kidnapped. And that part of the movie - her story - is great. With 'crazy house' that she moved in, weird neighbours strange situations. I think that the movie would've been better if it had ended with that, without 'the present story'. I really don't see a reason for that kidnapping part. Maybe to extend the lenght of the movie (only 75 minutes), but that just lowered my opinion about this movie. So it's 8, but could have been 9 or even 10 (if it was 60 minutes:-)