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 movie will always stay in my memory as one of the funniest and best comedies I ever saw back in former Yugoslavia. It centers around the eldest son (Stimac) of a family led by a strict authoritarian father in Danilo Bata Stojkovic's magnificent incarnation. The young Petar struggles to graduate from high school mainly for one reason-he is so infatuated with his Marxism teacher that he cannot think of anything else but her during the classes. So when the graduation time comes, he lies to his father about passing in all the subjects while in reality flunking in Marxism.

Of course, the truth is not easy to hide and when it eventually comes out, his father is appalled and decides to punish him and lead his mind off from girls by finding a job for him in a local bakery. But that becomes complicated too when it turns out a beautiful and voluptuous girl is working there and she is an easy catch as well! Complications and comical twists just keep coming and coming here and the laughter never ceases.

All this is going on during a very turbulent time, the '68 student revolution. My favorite scene is when Stojkovic throws out the TV because of the student uprising claiming it's immoral to watch it and then when Tito approves of the reforms he brings it back saying "Comrade Tito has said that the students are right. We can watch television again!" Paskaljevic was a master of socio comedy and all the actors do a great job. The ending is specially great and this is probably Slavko Stimac's best role.

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

8/10

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.

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.