Slovenia Fokus looks at some current and recent features from this country, and will be published here in a series of pages with two films to each page. Coming up: Igor Sterk's Tuning; Vinko Moderndorfer's Suburbs, etc. More information on many of these titles can be found at the Slovenian Film Fund.


    


Damjan Kozole's 'Labour Equals Freedom' [5/10]
   The shorter a movie's running-time, the more important the ending becomes. Originally made for TV but obtaining theatrical exposure in the wake of Kozole's success with people-trafficking drama Spare Parts, Labour Equals Freedom clocks in at 71 minutes (way too long for a short; too short for a feature) and the ending thus becomes a crucial element. Unfortunately the picture just fizzles out, undoing much of the positive impression created by the startlingly brisk first half.
   These early stretches chronicle, in impressively economic strokes via a series of short scenes, the breakdown in the marriage of an early-forties Ljubljana couple. Hangdog, balding Peter - aka Pero (Peter Musevski) has been recently laid off from his job as a machinist and is struggling to find work. This leads to a crisis of masculinity, manifesting itself in smoking, drinking and impotence. His unimpressed wife is the well-maintained Vera (Natasa Barbara Gracner), a white-collar council worker who has become the breadwinner for the family - the pair have a bespectacled, eleven-ish daughter named Sonja (Lara Djurica). Slovenia's entry into the EU hasn't been a positive development for Peter, who reckons "this country has failed me" and admits he is "groping for a solution." Vera, opining "I want something more from this life", finds it in the arms of a work-colleague.
   There's an irony in the fact that the problems of both protagonist and film are structural in nature: Peter a victim of changing economic circumstances, Kozole's script undone by its fundamental lopsidedness. Thanks to Jure Moskon's to-the-bone editing, for around forty minutes we're whisked through what feels like a staccato summary of a much longer film. But once Vera walks out, the pace slows and Kozole loses his way - especially after Peter makes a somewhat unlikely recovery from rock-bottom, a suicide-bid ending in absurdist farce and unlikely rescue thanks to the intervention of his foxy neighbour (Manca Dorrer). Having piled the misfortunes of Job on the sloping shoulders of his schlubby (job-seeking) hero, Kozole suddenly has a change of heart and goes all-out to provide him with a somewhat implausible happy ending. The title, meanwhile, has the smack of cheap-irony desperation: a high-falutin' political/historical reference rather opportunistically slapped onto what is really a familiar little tale of grimly quotidian woes.

Neil Young
23rd November, 2005

Mitja Novljan's Bullet Avoids the Fool [6/10]
   Surprisingly raunchy sex-comedy-drama beguiles and appeals with its freewheeling style for an hour, but hits trouble in the final act when shifting awkwardly into cod-thriller territory. Rough-edged DV-shot picture is at is best when focus is tight on the central characters - two couples cohabiting in a spacious downtown Ljubljana flat. Short of cash, sophisticated city-bred late-20s/early-30s bohemians Aleks (Uros Potocnik) and Epifani (Petra Zupan) reluctantly sublet a section of their apartment. The 'takers' turn out to be two folk of roughly similar age recently arrived from the far-off rural district of Prekmurje - aspiring waiter Joze (Ludvik Bagari) and the newly-pregnant Kiti (Petra Cirkovski).
   The enforced proximity soon leads to friction, though such problems are small beer compared with Aleks's money woes: he's deeply in debt to local gangsters, who have already broken his legs (forcing him to use a wheelchair) and threaten much worse. Himself approaching the end of his tether, the resourceful Joze proposes desperate measures to deal with the desperate situation...
   The script for Bullet Avoids the Fool is credited to Novljan along with his male leads Potocnik (bearish, laid-back) and Bagari (jittery, bug-eyed) - which suggests a significant degree of improvisation, or at least mucking-in collaboration, was involved in the creation of the screenplay. This is apparent in the quirky, unforced looseness of the early and middle sections - aided immensely by Vlado Kuzman's acoustic guitar-heavy score, the pore-exploringly intimate, anything-goes camerawork by Aleksander Petric, and, perhaps most significant of all, the brisk editing by Dafne Jemersic. One of the unsung heroines of the current Slovenian cinema scene (she cut Jan Cvitkovic's brilliant 68-minute Bread and Milk) Jemersic brings some of the similar easygoing, seductive rhythms that gave Igor Sterk's elliptical, 70-minute Ljubljana (2001) such an appealing, fragmentary feel.
   Sterk successfully avoided much in the way of conventional narrative or plot, and for as long as Novljan and his collaborators do the same this Bullet largely finds its target - the various domestic sexual tensions and (refreshingly) explicit escapades have the smack of authenticity (quite literally so, when Epifani discovers the joys of S+M). This certainly can't be said for the climax, in which the four flatmates take on a trio of scary gangsters using a range of tactics and household implements.
   The tone here is one of larky student-picture high-jinks, and a headscratching coda - seemingly set several years after the main action - is equally ill-advised, as if Novljan wanted to pad out a perfectly good mid-length feature into a duration more suitable for mainstream release. If this was indeed his tactic, it didn't work - the picture didn't find an audience in Slovenian cinemas, but should find a more welcoming home at the world's film-festivals where the fresh, offbeat tone and sparks of genuine cinematic talent will ensure Novljan's name is noted as one to watch out for next time.

Neil Young
25th November, 2005

BULLET AVOIDS THE FOOL : [6/10] : Norega se metek ogne : Slovenia 2004 : Mitja NOVLJAN : 79 mins (timed) :  seen on DVD at home in Sunderland (UK), 24th November 2005

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Jigsaw Lounge reviews of other recent films from Slovenia:
2000       Not Sponsored (VHS) (Mitja Okorn)
2001       Blind Spot (Hanna A W Slak) 
               Bread and Milk (Jan Cvitkovic)
2002       Guardian of the Frontier (Maja Weiss)
               Headnoise (Andrej Kosak) 
               Ljubljana (Igor Sterk)
               Not Sponsored II (Mitja Okorn)
               Rustling Landscapes (Janez Lapajne)
2004       Here and There (Mitja Okorn)
2005       Divided States of America : Laibach 2004 Tour (Saso Podgorsek) 
               Gravehopping (Jan Cvitkovic)




LABOUR EQUALS FREEDOM : [5/10] : Delo osvobaja aka Arbeit macht frei : Slovenia 2005 : Damjan KOZOLE : 71 mins : seen on DVD at home in Sunderland (UK), 23rd November 2005