A Serbian Film

The opening scene of A Serbian Film (2010) features a young boy staring in open-mouthed awe at a pornographic movie he stumbled upon by accident.  The suggestion by director Srdjan Spasojevic seems to be that some things, once seen, simply cannot be unseen.  And it’s an apt metaphor, considering that his film will leave just as many scars on its audience. 

Banned in several countries and censored in almost every other, A Serbian Film is the latest word-of-mouth record holder for the most “extreme” piece of cinematic exploitation, a notorious distinction of dishonor previously held by films likeLast House on the Left, Pink Flamingos or Martyrs.  Spasojevic’s film is without a doubt the most competently made…and also the most morally repugnant.

 

Milos is a retired porn actor struggling to stay on the straight and narrow and provide an income for his family.  So when an offer comes in to shoot an “artistic” adult film he begrudgingly accepts, despite the fact that the director, Vukmir, is a shady character with government connections.  With no script provided, Milos allows himself to be led into one bizarre set-up after another, all shot handheld by a small army of thugs.  And when he finally gets the courage to calls it quits, things go from bad to worse.

 

In interviews Spasojevic defends his film as a brutal representation of life under Serbian government control.  Ironically, that’s the same sort of propaganda used by Vukmir in the film itself, which layers on quite a few levels of irony.  Whether one buys into the film’s artistic intentions or not, it still crosses too many lines involving rape and pedophilia to be considered anything more than grindhouse extremism shined to a high-gloss luster.  Even the most jaded horror fan will come out of this thing feeling like Alex during the conditioning sequence of A Clockwork Orange.  And it’s exactly these sort of reviews that add to the films’ legacy.

 

There’s no denying A Serbian Film gets under your skin, particularly the eerie first half that plays out like a nightmarishly adult film noir.  But after Milos is injected with cattle aphrodisiac and turns into a sexual psychopath, the film follows him down a rabbit hole of snuff film perversity from which there is no escape.  From there all pretentions of high art are left in a wake of bodily fluids; it becomes obvious A Serbian Film is getting off on the very things it’s supposed to be criticizing.

 

 Previously available on a now 10-year-old bare bones home video release, Unearthed Films certainly delivers the full Monty here with two commentary tracks (one from the filmmakers, another with genre fans Joe Lynch & Adam Green), a pair of Q & As, trailers, stills and a preview of the unreleased A Serbian Documentary.

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