A comedy (?) that looks like some American B-movie made on a $50 budget by people who'd never before made movies. The dialogue is often amateur level, as is the acting, which occasionally even gets terrible. Only Sablic, Vuisic and partially Sokic extract some credibility from these superficially created characters. Vuisic is so good that he can make something out almost nothing. He can elicit some realism out of pure garbage of a script, which however cannot be said for the younger actors here.
Zoran Cvijanovic has never been worse. Sluggish and apathetic, he seems to crawl from one scene to the next as if very bored and as if he would rather read a Superman comic instead. His acting is borderline dilettante. He even hits the drums as if he's going to fall asleep on them - which I can't really blame him for, considering that he plays them along to the lame rhythms of the boring songs of Bosnia's non-artists Bijelo Dugme, whose mediocre music provides the background for this totally aimless film. One of these melodies is very reminiscent of "Sound of Silence". Goran Bregovic probably steals more often than I can even notice.
However, what I said about Cvijanovic doesn't quite apply to Sonja Savic as well. That is, I can't claim she has never been worse - simply because she is horrible in every film. This nepotist actress (daughter of a high-ranking Communist official) is so utterly incompetent that she didn't even manage to act surprised when Zoran appeared at the sea shore unannounced; she simply does't react at all, as if it's completely normal for him to be there.
Admittedly, neither she nor Zoran are completely to blame for being so bland and uninteresting, because their characters were conceived that way: one-dimensional, undefined, and without any clear motives. Their romance is completely sterile, like two robots circling one another, and they seem unsure that they even want a relationship, nor know what they want to do next. What Mihic was trying to say with this film, only he knows. This is one of his throwaway scripts that were hastily scribbled for whatever reason. Practically anyone can write something as banal and pointless as this. 70s YU movies had a notorious penchant for bad scripts. Many people mistakenly assume that it's the very low budgets that prevented some of those films from being (much) better, but this isn't particularly true. Putting together a usable script doesn't require huge amounts of money, it simply requires a little imagination and some effort. Alas, this lack of effort was generally a big hindrance in Yugoslavia, in all walks of life...
The whole shtick with Sonja's chubby girlfriend who acts as her "love counselor" is stupid because unrealistic. That actress (50 times more suitable to play the lead than mundane Sonja) reminds me of that absurd character from "The Love Life of Budimir Trajkovic" in which Budimir keeps receiving some stupid relationship advice from a peer. It's silly because it doesn't portray youth in a credible way.
Zoran's character is totally muddled. What does he actually want? What motivates him besides sex? Why is he late for rehearsals and then doesn't care when they kick him out of the band? It is incomprehensible that someone actually thought that such a mediocre personality could be even mildly interesting to anyone, especially since he doesn't do anything unusual - except when he brings his drums to the shore, which is a very stupid idea anyway, typical of a confused screenwriter.
But it's not just the young actors and the inept screenwriter who are to blame. The director phones in this film as if grudgingly obeying army orders, just to get it over with. The editing is bad, the use of music is inadequate, so the question arises why I didn't give this trash an even lower rating. The reason is because it can be watched despite its obvious incompetence, and that's only because 70s YU movies have a certain nostalgic bonus "quality" to them that alleviates their rubbishness to a small degree.
I can't say that this could have been a much better movie, considering that it fails in every category, but if they had cast the roles of Zoran and Sonja with more charismatic young actors maybe it would have been at least a shade better.
Zoran Cvijanovic has never been worse. Sluggish and apathetic, he seems to crawl from one scene to the next as if very bored and as if he would rather read a Superman comic instead. His acting is borderline dilettante. He even hits the drums as if he's going to fall asleep on them - which I can't really blame him for, considering that he plays them along to the lame rhythms of the boring songs of Bosnia's non-artists Bijelo Dugme, whose mediocre music provides the background for this totally aimless film. One of these melodies is very reminiscent of "Sound of Silence". Goran Bregovic probably steals more often than I can even notice.
However, what I said about Cvijanovic doesn't quite apply to Sonja Savic as well. That is, I can't claim she has never been worse - simply because she is horrible in every film. This nepotist actress (daughter of a high-ranking Communist official) is so utterly incompetent that she didn't even manage to act surprised when Zoran appeared at the sea shore unannounced; she simply does't react at all, as if it's completely normal for him to be there.
Admittedly, neither she nor Zoran are completely to blame for being so bland and uninteresting, because their characters were conceived that way: one-dimensional, undefined, and without any clear motives. Their romance is completely sterile, like two robots circling one another, and they seem unsure that they even want a relationship, nor know what they want to do next. What Mihic was trying to say with this film, only he knows. This is one of his throwaway scripts that were hastily scribbled for whatever reason. Practically anyone can write something as banal and pointless as this. 70s YU movies had a notorious penchant for bad scripts. Many people mistakenly assume that it's the very low budgets that prevented some of those films from being (much) better, but this isn't particularly true. Putting together a usable script doesn't require huge amounts of money, it simply requires a little imagination and some effort. Alas, this lack of effort was generally a big hindrance in Yugoslavia, in all walks of life...
The whole shtick with Sonja's chubby girlfriend who acts as her "love counselor" is stupid because unrealistic. That actress (50 times more suitable to play the lead than mundane Sonja) reminds me of that absurd character from "The Love Life of Budimir Trajkovic" in which Budimir keeps receiving some stupid relationship advice from a peer. It's silly because it doesn't portray youth in a credible way.
Zoran's character is totally muddled. What does he actually want? What motivates him besides sex? Why is he late for rehearsals and then doesn't care when they kick him out of the band? It is incomprehensible that someone actually thought that such a mediocre personality could be even mildly interesting to anyone, especially since he doesn't do anything unusual - except when he brings his drums to the shore, which is a very stupid idea anyway, typical of a confused screenwriter.
But it's not just the young actors and the inept screenwriter who are to blame. The director phones in this film as if grudgingly obeying army orders, just to get it over with. The editing is bad, the use of music is inadequate, so the question arises why I didn't give this trash an even lower rating. The reason is because it can be watched despite its obvious incompetence, and that's only because 70s YU movies have a certain nostalgic bonus "quality" to them that alleviates their rubbishness to a small degree.
I can't say that this could have been a much better movie, considering that it fails in every category, but if they had cast the roles of Zoran and Sonja with more charismatic young actors maybe it would have been at least a shade better.
