A SERBIAN FILM

Milos is a well-known pornographic actor, happily married with a child, and has definitively abandoned the career of the adult film industry. Unfortunately, the money earned from his fame is running out. To remedy the situation, he accepts a job from a certain Vukmir, a mysterious director who offers him an exorbitant sum to participate in a project surrounded by absolute secrecy. Equipped with an earpiece, Milos will simply have to execute what he is told, but soon the requests will go beyond normal pornography, throwing him into a whirlwind of violence, drugs, and inhumanity. I start this review by making a prediction that with absolute certainty will come true: this film will never be released in Italy. Not because reliable sources have written this, nor because it is such a bad film that it does not deserve to be seen in our country, because that would not be the truth. Simply because a cruel film of the caliber of "A Serbian Film", in our country, will never arrive. And probably it should not arrive anywhere. But we will analyze this aspect of the film later. Let's start from the beginning. We see Milos, a man with a legendary past as a porn actor, married and with a child. His life is happy between ups and downs, but there is a big problem: money. The glory has remained, but the money has run out. An opportunity presents itself, the opportunity of a lifetime, one that will allow him to take his family and leave that country with so many ghosts, with so much violence behind him, with such a sad story. Vukmir, the man who will provide him with his new job, is mysterious, talks about pornography as a form of art, talks about victims, philosophizes. Initially reluctant, Milos accepts, attracted by the immense sum of money offered to him. He starts his assignment and we are catapulted into something similar to a nightmare. Strange characters roam an orphanage, everything constantly filmed by men with cameras. It seems to be watching a Lynch film, dreamlike but with some off notes. And then comes the massacre. Now, it is difficult to comment objectively on a film like "A Serbian Film", because technically there would be nothing to object to. Well made, especially in the first long part where Milos's life and his new assignment are discussed, with actors perfectly in their roles, a driving soundtrack, all told with the calm necessary for a true auteur film. Moreover, the climax of tension and curiosity is not indifferent. Then comes the second part, completely different from the first, characterized by a frenetic editing, hallucinatory images, and continuous flashbacks and flashforwards. A trip of scenes that literally violate the spectator, one after another without giving respite, confusing on more than one occasion the mind of the viewer. But the eye of the public will set aside any type of judgment concerning the technique of realization in front of the introduction of the so-called "auteur pornography". A selection of scenes of unheard-of violence, unprecedented in cinema, and, I do not think I am wrong in saying this, beyond the limit of legality. One scene in particular, which well or badly the fans of the genre know by hearsay or because they have read it somewhere, surpasses every type of brutality seen in the seventh art. It is a gruesome scene in which abuses are committed on a newborn, just delivered by the mother. It's a voluntary spoiler, necessary, as a warning to the splatter fan who is curious in front of a film with a high level of gore like, in fact, "A Serbian Film". But it does not end, because the brutal scene in question is only the beginning of a sequence of outrages, one more inconvenient than the other, including other violence against minors and women, without leaving out the details. And now the question arises spontaneously: but was it really necessary? The director Srđan Spasojević has stated, quoting verbatim, that "the film is the diary of the violence inflicted by the Serbian government, the power that forces people to do what they do not want to do, they must feel the violence to understand it". It could be a valid justification for a denunciation film, but "A Serbian Film", always in the opinion of the writer, is not a denunciation film, but only an excuse to make the definitive torture-porn, which surpasses every imposed limit and put on stage things never shown. To talk about it. Naturally, the objective has been achieved. Setting aside personal judgment, the task of the reviewer is to judge the film objectively, so it will adhere to this for the final evaluation. It's a well-made film, a product like few others, capable of providing tension from start to finish. But if the undersigned were found with a gun pointed at his temple and asked if he recommends this film, the answer would probably be No.