Sjaj u ocima

Outstanding! Sjaj U Očima / Loving Glances is a warm, bright, very non-offensive yet successful in addressing issues that sparked the last civil war in Yugoslavia and the still unresolved problem of absorbing over 1 MILLION refugees from the Krajina alone! Somehow CNN and the rest of the global 'spin-doctors' were able to completely forget about the displacement of mostly (don't read only!) Serbs as well as the struggles of people who were open minded enough to enter what we call 'mixed-marriages'! I am half-Serbian half-Montenegrin but I have friends who thought they were simply Bosnian and then one day they woke up to learn that they were outcasts because they were half Serbian half Muslim! I am also from Belgrade. One of the outstanding nuances in this movie was the linguistic subtleties that I am afraid escaped the non-native speakers of Serbian/Croatian/Serbo-Croatian/Bosnian/Slovenian/Macedonian and the soon-to-be Montenegrin! Even if the English translation had been perfect, this would have been difficult to convey in the subtitles. I initially assumed that Romana's 'almost perfect' Belgrade jargon was simply a flaw in Ivana Bolanca's acting ability, only to learn that it was a perfect 'imitation' of 'Belradian' by someone from Zagreb!!! This is one of the ways I began to appreciate how great the cast of this movie is. Srdjan Karanović succeeded in making a tragic-comedy with a happy ending! The conflict did not overwhelm his main characters -- they were able to walk away from it. Ironically the guardian-angel characters could not escape it! Beograd was a perfect stage for this movie! Before this ridiculous war, my beautiful home was a safe heaven for all people regardless of race, upbringing, ethnicity, or religion! This film left me with a more than just a flicker of hope that there is a chance that Beograd can once again become that city. I am starting to feel that people like me who leave our home land trying to escape the pervasive ignorance, hyper-religiosity and radical nationalism, but never manage to bring their whole heart along may one day in a not so distant future have a home that really feels like a home to go back to!

first-class effort by Radivoje Andric, a young Serb director about couples in love during the Yugoslav conflict. At times sentimental, the story and incidents are original, imaginative and the characters are great too. A Serb intellectual who lives a desolate life as a political refugee in Belgrade misses his girlfriend who has emigrated to America. He imagines that his girlfriend is with her to keep him company, and then he imagines a whole cast of people from his past to keep him company during his homeless wanderings through Belgrade. We're never quite sure of how deluded he is; does the girl really exist? Are they really engaged? Then he meets a girl-a real girl-not an imaginary one- who forces him to deal with his realities and make choices. This film-which took a long time to be made because of the Yugoslavia conflict-doesn't get bogged down in politics, but it shows the effects of these events on ordinary people. Too bad it couldn't have been released (for example) in 1999 to give Americans a glimpse of Yugoslavs as a people not merely as a patchwork of ethnic tribes at war with one another. The settings and situations are bleak, but the people are charming, a mixture of the old-fashioned and hip. Don't miss the "computerized dating service" scenes and the matchmaker-they are great fun, if not a little sad. The female lead, Ivana Bolanca is charming and mysterious and vulnerable. Senad Alihodzic, the male lead is thoughtful, happy-go-lucky and bursting with poetry and optimism. I found myself wishing the scenes with imaginary characters could be shortened a bit, and that Ivan Bolanca's character could be fleshed out a bit-she too seemed like a mere romantic projection sometimes. Still, America needs more dreamers like Radivoje Andric to make movies.

This touching Serbian film deftly portrays the tragedy and confusion of the post-war Balkans, and does so with unfailing lightness and humor.

Belgrade, in the late 90's, became the refuge of a cascade of displaced persons, like handsome young Labud (swan) and Romana. They have enlisted the services of a match-maker to help them find companions.

The story is an old one – how the young couple find, lose, and ultimately keep one another – so the charm and interest of the film comes principally from the surrounding details. Labud, alone and living in a shelter, fantasizes about people from his past and has imaginary conversations with them. Among those who populate and direct his thoughts are his former fiancée (she emigrated to Chicago when war broke out), his mother, 'professor', various ancestors. Romana has her past with her, too, including her father, sister, and first love. It is a very busy film, therefore, especially when you consider all the eccentrics that also haunt the dating service.

There is much sentiment, but never a moment of sentimentality – especially surprising when one considers the loss that pervades the aftermath of armed conflict. The director makes a point of contrasting the varied pasts of his characters with the ethnic 'purity' which motivated the senseless war. He has concocted an uplifting, understated little gem with most engaging young stars.

After a decade of really heavy, dark films, reflecting the turmoil of the breakup of Yugoslavia ("Lepa Sela", "Rane", "Bure Baruta aka Balkan Express", and "Tockovi"), FINALLY a reasonably light take on the aftermath of some of these events. As you follow Labud, a Serbian refugee from Krajina, in his attempts to find his girlfriend Vida, and as he gradually grows to love Romana, the girl he meets due to a mix up at the "Happy Millennium" dating agency, you get the idea that life needs to go on. No matter how politics and events have caught you up, like it or not, in their whirlwind, eventually you land.... not always on your feet, but you land. And then you have to get up, and get on with it. This isn't easy, and we see Labud and Romana both struggling with their new reality as refugees, and also with their memories and consciences, which Karanovic represents in humorous, tongue-in-cheek, and sometimes touching flashbacks of their thoughts: Labud's mom, always working on crossword puzzles; Romana's uptight sister, always critical; the hairdresser girlfriend Vida, almost always washing the same poor extra's hair... It was extremely well received at the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival, as evidenced by the long applause and audience comments during Q/A with Karanovic. One thing stands out from its Toronto screening: When I was able to thank Karanovic for showing something positive (even uplifting), he smiled and said, "I want to show the world that we [the various peoples of ex-yugoslavia] all have lives, too". Easy to forget that if all you have to go by are oversimplified headlines and CNN reports. Creative casting, creative approach, and just something that should leave you feeling hopeful.