Varljivo leto '68

This is not a review but a correction of the English title, which is inaccurate. "Elusive" means difficult to find, catch, or achieve, difficult to remember or recall,indefinable, intangible, impalpable, or ambiguous. Serbian word "varljivo" primarily refers to frequently changing weather. This is quite clear from the movie dialogue when the judge mentions the summer and his young daughter characterizes it as "varljivo" because there are frequent rain showers. Figuratively, she might also imply the word to mean the political instability because of serious student protests all over Europe including Belgrade. She became interested in politics since she had a crush on a much older student who became involved in the protests.

The title would be much more accurate if the epithet used in front of "summer" were to be one of the following: precarious, variable, unstable, unbalanced, volatile.

This is not a good Yugoslav movie and certainly not a representative one. Main actors (mother and father) reprise their roles from Balkan Spy (albeit bloodless and pale here) and the rest doesn't even come near the wits of the movies based on Dusan Kovacevic's work (Balkan Spy, Who's Singin' There?, or Marathons) or other truly clever movies from the period before war on Balkans (for example, Underground). It's not even funny. A classic "coming of age" core topic was much better presented in any other (especially Italian) movie. In good (writing) hands, with different casting and so on this could have been a good movie. But it simply isn't. Pity.

A communist romantic comedy who proves again in communism there's no such a thing as censorship. Whose who say there was censorship in communism are brainwashed by capitalistt propaganda.

This movie has a cult status in former Yugoslavia for no reason whatsoever. It's just one of many unsuccessful movies done by so-called Prague school directors ( Paskaljevic, Grlic, Karanovic) that were out of touch with modern cinema and the world itself.

Beautiful women, legendary Bata Stojkovic and probably the best role of Slavko Stimac. Movie that never gets old.

8/10