A Serbian Film
Putting the porn back
into torture porn. And the torture. Lots of torture.
I
did not enjoy A Serbian Film.
I
will never watch A Serbian
Film again.
But
God, I admire A Serbian Film.
A
raw scream of rage from the torture psyche of a wounded nation, A Serbian
Film finally arrives on UK shores
with an unprecedented 49 compulsory cuts ordered by the BBFC, totalling over 4
minutes of screentime. And it’s still the most shocking, offensive, upsetting,
transgressive and angry film most of you are never going to see.
Struggling
to support his beautiful wife and young son, retired porn star Milos (Srdjan
Todorovic) is tempted to return to the screen by former co-star Layla (Katarina
Zutic) and visionary porn director Vukmir (Sergej Trifunovic), who offers him a
life-changing sum of money to star in his latest project, the ultimate porn
movie that’s a true political and artistic statement. The only catch is Milos
doesn’t get to see the script.
He’ll simply be put into a series of scenarios and expected to react
accordingly. Against his better judgement, Milos agrees. But Vukmir is shooting
no ordinary porn film and as his scenes become progressively darker and more
violent, Milos, disgusted, tries to quit. Only to wake up three days later,
beaten and covered in blood (not all of it his own), with no memory. Forcing
himself to retrace his steps, Milos descends into his own personal hell, as he
uncovers the truth behind Vukmir’s twisted vision…
Surfing
a wave of controversy that has seen it banned, cut and vilified around the
world, A Serbian Film is just as
bleak and horrific as the tabloids would have you believe featuring
unflinching, explicit scenes of sex, violence, rape, murder, paedophilia and
incest. The Citizen Kane of snuff
movies, A Serbian Film is fun for
the whole family: children are raped by their parents, a woman is beaten and
decapitated during sex, a man delivers a newborn baby and rapes it in front of
its mother. In a scene that quite literally has to be seen to be believed, one
particularly unpleasant character is ‘skullfucked’ to death. Depravity follows
perversion until ultimately the audience is left numb, psychologically raped by
the horrors they’ve witnessed. And that’s why A Serbian Film is one of the most powerful, disturbing,
provocative, brilliant films you’re ever likely to see.
Gradually
sucking the viewer in, A Serbian Film’s first 45 minutes could be that of any slightly leftfield, arthouse
thriller as we’re introduced to the cash-strapped Milos and his family and made
to care about them. We see Milos seduced by the promise of wealth and freedom
despite his misgivings about the project he’s gotten involved in. In a Rocky-style montage we watch him mentally and physically
prepare for his new role; kicking the booze, exercising to get in shape,
meditating. We follow him as he is cast adrift in a mystery that owes us much
to David Lynch as it does Paul Schrader. As Milos tries to make sense of the
world he has stumbled into, first-time director Srdjan Spasojevic ratchets up
the tension, aided immensely by Sky Wikluh’s buzzing industrial score, building
a palpable sense of dread and expectation before unleashing hell. While most
horror films are an exercise in delayed gratification – we want something bad to happen,
we need something bad to happen and then the bad thing happens and we get to
experience that sublime release of tension and the vicarious excitement of
danger - the second half of A Serbian Film is an almost unwatchable visual
and mental assault on the audience. Spasojevic doesn’t just rub our noses in
deravity; he drowns us in it, making us both victims and accomplices.
Just
as Pasolini’s Salo was an
indictment of the excesses, cruelties and corruption of mind and state in
Fascist Italy, A Serbian Film is
an attempt to address the horrors perpetrated by both the state and the people
during the course of over a decade of political turmoil, genocidal warfare and
ethnic cleansing, where rape and terror were little more than tools to suppress
the populace. While Milos is driven to destruction by the fury of what he’s
done and what’s been done to him, every frame of A Serbian Film drips with the fury of Serbia’s recent history.
Milos and Vukmir are both victims and victimisers; Vukmir just has more control
and an awareness of his place in the world. As he dementedly rails against the
pornography of the victim culture, Vukmir is a lucid, seductive presence.
Driven, passionate and completely insane, he’s the personification of the
Serbian state, his cinematic atrocities mirroring those committed in reality.
Beaten, drugged and raped, Milos is the victim forced into the role of
oppressor, becoming the tool through which Vukmir can make real his vision, a
vision that ultimately destroys them both.
While
the onscreen violence in A Serbian Film is shocking and horrific, much of it revealed in flashback or through
the hazy camcorder footage Milos watches to try to jumpstart his recollection
of events, the film, unlike the more palatable Hollywood torture porn of the Saw series, has the courage to humanise its victims and
to portray the physical, emotional and psychological aftermath of rape and
sexual abuse. Srdjan Todorovic is fantastic as Milos, a sympathetic everyman
who’s just trying to take care of his family, driven mad and reduced to his
most bestial instincts and left a wounded animal, a burnt-out shell of a man.
As the Mephistophelean Vukmir, Sergej Trifunovic is a silky seducer, an almost
Satanic figure, his urbane, erudite persona barely masking his white-hot
insanity while Jelena Gavrilovic and Katarina Zutic as Milos’ wife and co-star
respectively are both terrific, Gavrilovic in particular conveying a haunted
emptiness by the end of the film that’s heartbreaking.
Perhaps the most horrific thing about A Serbian
Film is
how good it is. If it were cheap, exploitation rubbish that looked like it’d
been shot on VHS, with amateurish special effects, terrible performances and
lashings of unconvincing gore it’d be easy to dismiss the film. But its not.
It’s intelligent, well-shot, well-paced, features brave, committed performances
and has some of the most queasily upsetting scenes you are ever liable to see
filmed. But most of all A Serbian Film is an ANGRY film. A Serbian Film is born of a rage
that’s been forced to witness the absolute depths humanity can sink to. When
anything becomes permissible, the film argues, the unspeakable becomes
commonplace, mere entertainment.
You will not enjoy it.
It’s a film that’s out to shock you, to anger you,
sicken you and upset you.
You will not be entertained
A
Serbian Film doesn’t want your love.
It wants to shake you out of your complacent, desensitised bubble and rub your
nose in suffering. It wants to brutalise you, assault you, devastate you. It
wants to remind you of your, of our, collective complicity in the rape and
suffering of a country.
A
Serbian Film is here to remind you
just how powerful, shocking and subversive extreme cinema can be.
David Watson
Director
Srdjan Spasojevic
Cast
Srdjan Todorovic. Sergej Trifunovic, Jelena
Gavrilovic, Katarina Zutic, Slobodan Bestic, Ana Sakic, Lena Bogdanovic, Luka
Mijatovic, Andjela Nenadovic
Country
Serbia
Screenplay
Srdjan Spasojevic & Aleksander Radivojevic
Running time
95min
Year
2010
Certificate
18
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