Miriana

A very well made film set in early '60s communist Yugoslavia. The five young actors who are the teenagers at the center of the story give strong, sincere and emotionally deep performances. A clear depiction of how the natural trust and naivete inherent in teens can be easily manipulated and how that impacted the rest of their lives. Highly recommended.

Four old friends are reunited in their native Yugoslavia at the funeral of their childhood companion, a once vivacious young girl they each secretly adored and together helped escape to the West. Now middle aged and melancholy, and confronted again by the unresolved mysteries of their past, they recall the events that drew them together and cast them apart so many years earlier. The story is at once both romantic and perceptive, showing the personal and political traumas of growing up in the Balkans during the 1950s, but with a bittersweet glow of nostalgia underlining the end of innocence for characters and country alike. The understated grace of the film is perhaps best revealed at the moment when the young heroine is seduced by an unscrupulous Communist Party member (a rival of her four friends), whose twin tattoos of Stalin and Lenin appear to caress her flesh, striking just one of the many grace notes in an altogether memorable drama.

One of the most beautiful movies ever made in ex Yu.Story is very familiar to people in ex Yul because generation after war used to live in the same way.People in the west cant imagine how political situation in our country affect people.The plot is in the 50",When Josip Broz Tito said no to the SSSR and politbiro and because of that our borders becomes open for western influence.But,in a country were people didn't had much money jeans was only ideal and friendship was everything.The friendship between for young people an a girl was so strong that after 40 years of their emigration from Yu is still alive.They get together after all this years on Ester"s funeral and they start to remember of their childhood,before their went to the emigration and become successful people.

I TIVO'd this flick one night due to hearing the music at the beginning of the film.

What is that main theme song? I have that song from an old 8 track tape of my dad's that of course sounds like crap so I've always wondered the title.

I tried looking up the movie title on www.allmusic.com and found nothing directly linked to the theme song and that movie. I really haven't had a chance to see the whole film but it looks pretty good. Hopefully I will soon.

If someone can possibly clue me in on the title of that theme song I would be very appreciative.

"Hey Babu Riba" is a film about a young woman, Mariana (nicknamed "Esther" after a famous American movie star), and four young men, Glenn, Sacha, Kicha, and Pop, all perhaps 15-17 years old in 1953 Belgrade, Yugoslavia. The five are committed friends and crazy about jazz, blue jeans, or anything American it seems.

The very close relationship of the teenagers is poignant, and ultimately a sacrifice is willingly made to try to help one of the group who has fallen on unexpected difficulties. In the wake of changing communist politics, they go their separate ways and reunite in 1985 (the year before the film was made).

I enjoyed the film with some reservations. The subtitles for one thing were difficult. Especially in the beginning, there were a number of dialogues which had no subtitles at all. Perhaps the conversational pace required it, but I couldn't always both read the text and absorb the scene, which caused me to not always understand which character was involved. I watched the movie (a video from our public library) with a friend, and neither of us really understood part of the story about acquiring streptomycin for a sick relative.

This Yugoslavian coming of age film effectively conveyed the teenagers' sense of invulnerability, idealism, and strong and loyal bonds to each other. There is a main flashforward, and it was intriguing, keeping me guessing until the end as to who these characters were vis-a-vis the 1953 cast, and what had actually happened.

I would rate it 7 out of 10, and would like to see other films by the director, Jovan Acin (1941-1991).