Montenegro

Trailer—Montenegro

I guess with Sweet Movie Dusan Makavejev's bizarreness peaked and he decided to make something more straight forward. It is still by no means a regular movie, but there's weird and then there's "weirdest". This one is like a feminist tract about a bored, rich housewife who leaves her snobbish husband and perfect kids to stay with some bohemian Serbs who run a debauched night club. She has a fling with a young man, and yes, that does mean they have sex on a pile of food. I think with his less bizarre, assaultively creative movies, Makavejev also became less interesting. His next one, The Coca Cola Kid, was a new peak in that direction. This one had some of the outrageousness and some of the mundane. It was an intriguing concoction, but not as successful as WR:Mysteries of the Organism.

This film has it all. Great acting. Great script. The story is quirky and pulls you in. The mixture of "conventional Sweden", the ex-patriot wife, and the Balkan immigrant community creates a powerful tension. Wonderful photography/editing, And charming theme song, thanks to Shel Silverstein. Susan Anspach is a knockout in portraying the dislocated housewife amidst the bizarre immigrants of the Zanzibar. It is an example of why small, independent films rule over the excesses of Hollywood garbage.

Were it not for the wooden dialogs this could have been a better movie. It is a little hard for the characters to come off as authentic when they sound as if they give dictation. The humor was not bad, especially in scenes such as the group-photographs with the man with the knife sticking out of his forehead, but such scenes are few and far between in this movie. The ending (no spoilers here) is too abrupt, as if the director wanted to end the film in the quickest way possible. I could not identify with, or bring myself to like any of the characters, and that alone makes this a bad movie. The one thing I would say for this endeavor is that the sex scenes are refreshingly original.

An interesting enough film to watch, it is very unusual, yet it is not really satisfying stuff. There are some rather intense bits, especially one of the dance acts in the bar, but it seems to go off on tangents, with a limited sense of linear storytelling, kind of as if it had just been written only as it went along. There is a great song, sung by Marianne Faithful, which is added into the mix very well, but the mix is awfully hard to make sense of, and it is even difficult to tell if the film is trying to be a comedy or a drama. I am actually fully uncertain of what to make of this film - whether it is good or whether it is bad. All I can say is that it is interesting as something very different, but somehow not quite satisfying after the end credits have finished rolling.

This film was darn good in spite of the fact that almost all of the characters behave in utterly incomprehensible ways. Marilyn Jordan (Susan Anspach) was at least characterized as a bit of a loon from the beginning. Some really fine acting here, Anspach most notably, but also just about all of the Yugoslavian actors, none of whom had I ever heard of before. Of particular note was the young woman, I think it was Patricia Gelin. I'll have to check and see if she has made other English-language films.

Susan Anspach is beautiful and delirious (must've been the acting lessons from Jack Nicholson), Marianne Faithfull singing "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan" was a stroke of brilliance, and the scene of the husband prancing around the Danish moderne bedroom with his psychiatrist and his wife, wearing nothing but matching bathrobes juxtaposed to the gypsy basting the roast with the beer he's drinking is one of the most memorable scenes. I'd own this but there are children in the house. It is raunchy.

Montenegro is, without a doubt, one the freshest, most original and seldom seen gems on the planet. Anspach delivers a personal best as a housewife on the brink of insanity who befriends a band of eccentrics at the Zanzi Bar. What follows is a bizarre odyssey of sexual and emotional discovery. Robust characters, Pinter's beautiful cinematography, and tart humor make this a must. The stuff of life.

In Stockholm, the American Marilyn Jordan (Susan Anspach) is a woman married with the Swedish Martin Jordan (Erland Josephson), having two children and a nice house. She is bored with her life and presents some traces of insanity. One day, after an incident in the airport, when her husband intended to travel to Recife, she meets a group of Yugoslavians, goes with them to a strange night-club, has an affair with a guy (Montenegro – Svetozar Cvetkovic) who treats animals and comes back home with some fruits and a `big' surprise. This movie is a very weird, non-sense and bizarre black humor comedy. Although being awarded in Brazil, in the São Paulo Film Festival, I did not like it. My vote is five. Title (Brazil): `Montenegro'

An hilarious and weird sex comedy from Dusan Makavejev, about an bored, neurotic American woman married into an insane and yet strangely uninteresting Swedish family, who finds release in a group of randy, freedom-loving (if scruffy) Yugoslavian immigrants. Makavejev's take on modern Europe and modern life in general seems just right to me. Susan Anspach makes the most of her leading role, and is better than I've ever seen her before. She never quite broke through as a major star, and her work in Montenegro will leave the viewer wondering why.