Varljivo leto '68

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 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.

Following the Summer of Love in 1967, 1968 was vastly different. The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Bobby Kennedy, the student uprising in Paris, the protest at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the massacre of protesters in Mexico City right before the Olympics got held there, all culminating in Nixon's election.

Goran Paskaljević's "Varljivo leto '68" ("The Elusive Summer of '68" in English) indirectly looks at this. The protagonist is Petar, a teenage boy in Yugoslavia. His dad, while a Marxist, is nonetheless the type who thinks that the younger generation doesn't appreciate what the parents' generation did (sort of an Archie Bunker in that sense). Petar is flunking Marxism in school, due to his interest in women. This ranges from his teacher, to a young woman in a bakery (resulting in the movie's best scene). But this is all amid the turbulent events that took place that summer. Early in the movie the family sees the Paris uprising on the news, and towards the end there's news that the Warsaw Pact armies have entered Prague.

I'd say that this story could've taken place in almost any country. It's well known that the '60s were all about sexual awakening and protests, much of it scorned by the parents' generation. Indeed, the movie shows some of the protests that took place in Yugoslavia. We even hear "The Blue Danube" played while the family is on the beach (I wonder if this was a reference to "2001: A Space Odyssey").

Anyway, it's not a masterpiece, but still worth seeing. I don't know how widely available it is; I saw it online.

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.

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

8/10