Klip

I have just returned from cinema and I am very pleased with this movie. It's fresh, it's bold, it's contemporary and it's believable. The young cast and the young director have made a wonderful debut.

Some people left the screening obviously shocked by the explicitness of the sex scenes, but a lot more understood that we cannot avoid sex as a sort of human interaction and communication. Things that happen in bed are indicators of the quality of a relationship.

Frustration and passion of the young generation, living in bleak and volatile conditions of the 21. century world shaken by both material crisis and spiritual crisis, are the key elements of this movie.

The realism of explicit sex scenes and violent party scenes is what makes this movie a Serbian version of the cult movie Kids (1995) and the energy of the characters resembles the TV series Skins (2007).

First of all, thx for the amazing acting performed by those actresses especially Isidora. You did well.

I was thing to give 5 out of 10 because there was nothing to see in this movie. A lot of kissing, a lot of partying, drinking and teenage shenanigans. Not much about the characters. But the scene in the bathroom where Jasna and Dole had a conversation about Jasna's father might be very indicative, that despite her appearance that made people believe she was a bad teenage girl who didn't care about anything. She actually did care about her father. She acted like she had no feeling because she didn't know what to do. Children in her age usually love hanging out with friends and being troublemakers. She was one of them. She loved her father, and she loved Dole. Children in her age need more attention from their parents. They need to teach them how to behave. Guidance and correction are needed when a mistake is made.

What can we say about this movie? From a country that was huge cinema- titan back in the day (60s-70s) Serbian cinema is reduced to this?

Majority of this movie is pretty bad. First of all, it's really boring. 100 min movie tend to drag itself and it looked like it was 5h long. There's no plot. My apologies to director\writer of this movie, but you're not a "smart" writer if you leave plot shallow as this one and just decide to throw in bunch of explicit sex scene to shock your audiences. All it does is make your "story" more shallow. There's no real message in this movie except "teen girls of modern Serbia are idiots".

Next, we come to settings. There are like two sets in this flick. Girls house, and one other building that was used pretty much for everything (School, hospital, classroom, other girls\guys apartments). I swear, I lost track of time and space watching this movie. Every set looks way to similar.

Characters: None of the characters are interesting. They are all pretty shallow and undeveloped. Director tried to make some sympathies for lead character buy throwing (unnecessary) subplot of girl's sick father, but everything pretty much falls on it's back since by the time that happens (somewhere at the end of the movie), lead character pretty much ruins every part of her life that you have zero sympathies for her and you really don't care what happens to her next.

on the positive side, acting was surprisingly good for bunch of unknown actors\actresses. Lead actress Isidora Simijonovic was pretty good, it's not her problem that script and the other aspects of the movie are horrible. She did a descent job for a unknown actress and some scenes would be even worse if it wasn't for her acting skills. She's also pretty (which is never a bad thing). Support cast of older actors are also good. Sadly, we would probably never heard of her again, which is a shame.

Some direction and editing were nicely spliced. There's noting outstanding, but basic textbook direction was fine. Now, the scenes themselves are not very interesting. Clips from girl's life are not very interesting and sex scenes themselves were not all that shocking at all (they were just explicit in terms of what's seen on screen, porn-like).

In the end, sadly, it's just another one of "sh(l)ock" movies from Serbia.

my main question is, how the heck did this got financed by Serbian Ministry of Culture? Did they even read a script? Maybe it was connection that worked behind the scenes, who knows?

When society is shaken in its foundations, and its people is lost in extreme life treating situations like (job lose, starvation, economy crisis, where corrupted police and government are the mafia, etc), the one way for dealing with problems is escaping reality.

Youth in Serbia confronted with that situations and reality, with no hope for escape or better times, try to lose themselves in every day usage of opiates like alcohol and drugs. With stimulants no other than false idols, and culture of pap, they trap themselves in meaningless relationships of lust and sex.

Parents and elders, often just happy to have healthy children, that made it through the day, are blind to sings of moral degradation and delinquency.

And finally, in society like that (Serbia from '90 to today 2013), where culture is failing to enrich and refine someones existence, the only purpose of art and artists are to shock and stun to awake and show the obvious. So watch this movie and see the realistic display of dying nation. (mark for realistic movie 10, but 6 for production and cast- final 8)

Lacking both plot or character development of any sort, Klip presents director Maja Milos' trying to give us a brutal insight into the lives of Serbian youth through a young & troubled teenager named Jasna who likes recording the world around her on her cellphone. Her family life is a mess since her father is dying of a terminal illness while her mother isn't prepared to deal with all of this. Jasna also has a crush on a hooligan who, after getting to know that she will do anything for him, starts taking advantage of her sexually without reciprocating towards her feelings. Throughout the 90 minutes, all we see here is the self-destruction journey that Jasna is on, the drastic measures she takes to fill the emptiness in her life & how little self-respect she has for herself.

I won't blame the director's intent here to present a nihilistic view of a part of today's young generation but the execution is terrible. There is no scene present in the film where we can connect for once with any of the character & near the end when the film tries to do that, it's already too late as we don't care anymore about anyone. The direction isn't that bad, Isidora Simijonovic is fine as Jasna, camera-work is amateur but still passable but the plot & script is just as shallow as its characters. The sex scenes are explicit for no reason whatsoever except for shock value, the pacing is so bad that 100 minutes feel like 3 hours and the rest of the cast is plain dumb.

On an overall scale, Klip had the potential to be an emotionally scarring feature but turned out to be nothing like that. Whatever is thrown in the film to move us, that ill father plot line for example, never really works out. There are glimpses of what it wants to say through those aggressive & reckless attitude of today's teens but it's not done properly. And the film as a whole is so badly scattered into fragments that we don't even feel like putting it all together to make any sense. A waste of your time & money, Klip is a motion picture that goes way too awry in trying to capture whatever it wanted to say or depict. Recommendation? Skip it.