Aloa: Festivity of the Whores

On a certain day in ancient Greece, the festivity of Haloa was held in which prostitutes were blindfolded in front of the temples looking to succeed. If they did not find themselves lucky, it was considered a bad year.

The information above is given in a museum visit, and it is the reason why the film is called like that. It follows Maira (Neda Arneric) and Manfred (Stevo Zigon), a married couple, vacationing on the Croatian island of Hvar, where Mladic (Ranko Zidaric), son of their host Marija (Dusica Zegarac), will enter their life like a disrupting force difficult to be stopped.

Directed by Lordan Zafranovic and based on a novel by Veljko Barbieri, the film narratively blends reality with Greek tragedies that give meaning to the events of the story. By this reason, it traces symmetries in the dynamics of the married couple and the young lovers with symbolism as an open door to a richer layered plot. It is summer, and they are young, attractive people. Maira, upon seeing Mladic, will start feeling beguiled by him, and that seed of attraction flowers into a romance under the sun of the Adriatic Sea.

The movie progresses and unexpected turns of events ensue. Zafranovic's feature has a nice cinematography, mainly more by reason of the setting than of anything else. It is an entertaining story, although it rarely rises above average.

I cannot remember who recommended this to me, and that's a good thing because revenge would be cruel. The movie is boring, needless, lousy made and even naked Neda Arneric can't improve the impressions. The story could be told in 20-30 minutes and with better directing it maybe could be a decent movie, because the basic idea is good. But when you slubber that idea and stretch it to two hours result is agonizing boredom. Something like this you can find only in YU cinematography. We do not have OK movies. We have masterpieces like "Maratonci trce pocasni krug" i "Ko to tamo peva" drowned in a heap of nonsense like this one. And then, after decomposition of YU, the new wave of movies comes, movies that are modern and much better produced, more westward, but even if they are not boring like before, they are equally needless. Respect to exceptions like "Lepa sela lepo gore" and a few more. All in all, I will definitely give up on domestic cinematography, except if a particular movie is recommended by at least a dozen people I trust.

4/10