Oct 6, 2013

A Serbian Film

Saw A Serbian Film. It has a reputation of being very difficult to watch and it was indeed an ordeal. I understand it has some kind of allegorical message about politics in Serbia expressed via S&M-themed porn (in the grand tradition of the Marquis De Sade,) but this is not clear from the film itself. The film itself is a kind of horror film where a male porn star is drugged for a film shot and then, finding his wife and son missing after waking up, he tries to recreate his footsteps from the previous night (hint: wife and son are not okay.) The film is seemingly full of commentary about the porn industry and sexual politics and also has some crypto-message about politics (allegedly) but I think it's mainly an excuse to push boundaries and gross people out. In this endeavor it succeeds admirably. Grotesque and gross, it is not ugly or cheap enough to be easily dismissed but neither is it smart enough to be anything but dumb torture-porn (a genre I wish was not an actual genre.)

I don't mind having my boundaries pushed and it's really not all that bad (the special effects are okay but sufficiently lacking to make it obvious that most of it is fake. I mean, like comedy and horror, you kind of have to play along for it to be effective.) The gross-out scenes (such as they are) are pretty imaginative and well-shot, but don't expect a good plot or even very interesting ideas. Avoid.

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