By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Goran Paskaljevic
Starring: Bojana Novakovic | Dragan Jovanovic | Lazar Ristovski | Mira Banjac | Nebojsa Glogovac | Nebojsa Milovanovic | Slavko Stimac
Original language title: Optimisti
Country: montenegro, serbia
Year: 2007
Running time: 98
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478714/
Bruce says: “THE OPTIMISTS is a series of five vignettes about those who more or less take advantage of the situation rather than rise to the occasion. The first is about a hypnotist who visits a peasant village. The hapless Serbians have withstood the tribulations of war only to be flooded out of their homes. The hypnotist puts villagers under his spell with the mantra ‘everything is so great, it can’t be better.’ The second involves a factory worker whose daughter is raped by the owner of the factory. She spitefully bites off her attacker’s ear; when she returns home she is withdrawn and listless. The other factory workers and the girl’s mother offer no support for the girl or her father in pursuing justice. They are fearful for their jobs and lives.
“The third story involves a compulsive gambler, in debt over his head, who seems to have inherited the gambling gene considering most of his relatives also been caught in the same web. He finds a rich widow who has a knack for winning at the slot machines in the local casino and develops a plot to get her money to pay back his gambling debts. The next story involves a young boy of eight or nine who is obsessed with killing animals. His father teaches him how to kill a pig and the kid just can’t stop killing things. He cannot be left alone on the farm or another animal will meet an untimely death. The father, desperately searching for a panacea, consults a traveling cardiologist about the problem. The final episode involves a phony faith healer who is taking a bus load of sick and disables people to a lake for ‘the cure.’
As we see people reacting to the realities of life in irrational or nefarious ways it is difficult to find anything optimistic about prospects in Serbia and Montenegro. Director Paskaljevic has a jaundiced view of his fellow countrymen and his message is delivered with heavy punctuation. The cast is excellent. 3.5 cats
“THE OPTIMISTS was screened at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.”