Julia

★★½
“As therapy, beats ice-cream and a copy of The Notebook.”

juliaPainfully shy doctor’s assistant Julia (Williams) is drugged and raped by a group of young men, but is too traumatized to report the crime to the authorities. Sitting alone in a corner of a bar one night, she overhears another woman, Sadie (Tozzi), talking about a radical therapy regime, that allows women to reclaim their self-esteem and power. Eventually talking Sadie into referring her to Doctor Sgundud (Noseworthy) who, after discovering Julia is a suitable case for treatment, allows Sadie to mentor Julia in the system. This involves seducing men, and then punishing them for their lechery. However, Sgundud’s therapy comes with strict rules against taking personal action against those who abused you: rejoicing in her new=found power, Julia is not so keen on abiding by such apparently arbitrary restrictions, especially coming from a mere man. But the doctor wasn’t kidding, when he warned her of the severe consequences for not following the rules.

Initially intriguing, the film becomes more problematic as it goes on, both morally and cinematically. By “flirty fishing” for men who have done little if anything wrong, and then punishing them, Julia has moved from abused to abuser, and the movie doesn’t succeed in bringing the audience over the line with her, and any sympathy for her is largely lost as a result, well before she ever gets round to confronting those actually responsible for the attack. Nor does the film appear to know what to do once it gets there, suddenly shifting focus so that Dr. Sgundud becomes the Big Bad, though we know little about him or his background, beyond that he seems to enjoy manipulating the easily manipulated. On the plus side, the film looks luscious, depicting a New York saturated in neon and rain, like some kind of nightmarish car commercial. As the lead, Williams (previously seen on all fours in the first part of Human Centipede) is solid enough in terms of her transformation from self-harming wallflower into avenging succubus.

However, she doesn’t bring enough personality to the role to make it memorable. Compare and contrast, say, the similarly-themed (and equally problematic, in different ways) American Mary, in which Katherine Isabelle had a far greater impact. Or Nurse 3D – also with a medical professional character – where Paz de la Huerta went over the top, dragging the viewer with her – kicking and screaming if necessary. Campbell appears to be aiming for low-key, yet ends up closer to flat-line, and I found myself tuning out in the second half as a result. While even-handed in its depiction of the sexual violence, with one scene certainly likely to have male viewers crossing their legs, there’s otherwise just not enough impact. When you’re going down a well-worn path, you either need to travel it extremely well, or take an interesting diversion, and sadly, this does neither.

Dir: Matthew A. Brown
Star: Ashley C. Williams, Tahyna Tozzi, Jack Noseworthy, Joel de la Fuente

Big Driver

★★★½
“Lady Vengeance”

bigdriverEasily punching above its weight for a Lifetime TVM, this is as disturbing as you’d expect from the director of the original Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, working off a Stephen King short story. Crime writer Tess Thorne (Bello) is on her way back from a speaking engagement, when her car gets a puncture; the large gentleman (Harris) who stops to help, turns out to be a savage rapist, who brutalizes Tess repeatedly, before leaving her for dead in a storm-drain, beside his previous victims. Tess survives, but is traumatized by the experience, and won’t tell anyone what happened. Her mind begins to fracture, with the leading character in her book (Dukakis) coming to life and talking to her – as well as the GPS in her car (not credited, but reportedly the voice of King). Digging in, Tess finds that her accident may not have been quite as accidental as she thought, and her quest for vengeance, is going to require a broader net than she initially thought.

It’s the performances which make this work, though the concept is solid enough, containing a number of elements readily identifiable as King staples, e.g. dead people talking. The translation to screen does have its issues; never explained, for example, is how Tess’s disabled car shows up in the parking lot of a biker bar, fully intact and with her possessions inside. Much though the resulting cameo from 80’s rocker Joan Jett is welcome,, it’s a blatant plot hole which should have been addressed. That aside, it’s much grittier than I expected, with the assault in particular pulling so few punches, I have to wonder if the version which played on Lifetime was edited for content compared to this DVD release. Bello does a good job of taking the audience inside the disintegrating mind of Thorne, to the point where we genuinely wondered how much of what we were seeing had a basis in reality, or if it was just a psychological coping mechanism. Dukakis is also excellent, providing a restrained, yet sarcastic counterpoint of commentary to the heroine’s actions, as she falls apart, yet still proceeds with her mission.

Things proceed to a thoroughly adequate conclusion, even allowing for the vast difference in size and strength between Tess and her assailant; if nothing else, guns are certainly a great equalizer! But Tess’s smarts are just as important as her aggression or lust for vengeance, helping her both uncover the truth about what happened, and then ensure that the police don’t track her down after the event. The traumatic experience certainly leaves her a changed person, and probably only right it should; not a journey I’d want anyone I know to experience themselves, but it may indeed be a case of, what does not kill you, makes you stronger.

Dir: Mikael Salomon
Star: Maria Bello, Will Harris, Olympia Dukakis, Stephen King

Spy

★★★★
“Girls with guns and buns?”

spyIf not perhaps your prototypical action heroine, this is a thoroughly amusing and very entertaining feature, managing both to spoof and pay homage to the entire genre of its title. Susan Cooper (McCarthy) is really good at her job, which is being a support analyst for the CIA’s top agent, Bradley Fine (Law). He is gunned down while on the trail of a stolen nuclear warhead, by the evil Rayna Boyanov (Byrne), who also knows the identity of all the agency’s other field agents. Susan, who has been behind a desk her whole career, so is unknown to the outside world, convinces her boss she should go after Rayna, much to the disgust of Fine’s colleague, Rick Ford (Statham). What is supposed to be an “observe and report” mission becomes more, after Cooper saves Boyanov’s line and becomes part of her inner circle, giving her a chance to find the location of the missing bomb, yet also putting Susan in grave danger.

I’ve seen McCarthy before, most notably enduring (thanks, Chris!) Bridesmaids, where she seemed a bit of a one-note actress: “It’s funny, ‘cos I’m big.” I was expecting much the same here, with not much more than two hours of fat jokes. However, on the basis of this, I was wrong; just as Peter Dinklage is an actor who happens to be short, so it appears McCarthy is an actress who happens to be large. For instance, at one point, she has to pretend to be a bodyguard assigned to take care of Rayna by her father. She nails it, spitting out lines such as, “I’m gong to reach through your fucking body and rip out your back like a fucking werewolf” [yeah, it’s gleefully R-rated for language] with such a remarkable degree of badass commitment, that she is entirely convincing as such. Hell, there’s even a brawl in a kitchen, whee Cooper goes up against an assassin sent after Boyanov, which is remarkably solid [and makes sense, because it was set up earlier, when we see a video of Cooper during her training where she showed similar skills]. Implausible? Well, not if you’ve ever seen Sammo Hung in action.

Beyond McCarthy, what particularly elevates this is a slew of excellent supporting performances. While Byrne chews the scenery to very good effect as a villainess, it’s Statham and Hart who steal just about every scene they are in. Statham is, more or less, parodying every other role he has had, spinning utterly implausible tall tales of his derring-do, e.g. “I’m immune to 179 different types of poison. I know because I ingested them all at once when I was deep undercover in an underground poison-ingesting crime ring.” Hart, we have known and loved for some time due to her BBC show, Miranda, and she plays much the same delightfully klutzy, self-effacing persona here, to the extent we suspect she probably wrote her own dialogue. This trio form a solid foundation, off which McCarthy can bounce her personas, to excellent effect, and I’m now rather more confident in Feig’s upcoming reboot of Ghostbusters. The female cast there did initially seem more than a tad stunty, but on the basis of this, he and McCarthy would seem to have a decent shot at pulling it off. A very pleasant surprise, on a number of levels.

Dir: Paul Feig
Star: Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne, Jason Statham, Miranda Hart

Return to Sender

★★
“Deadlier than the mail”

Return_to_SenderPike seems to have been teetering on the edge of action-heroineness since she first reached popular attention as Bond girl Miranda Frost, in Die Another Day, thence through the likes of Queen Andromeda in Wrath of the Titans, and her upcoming portrayal of an undercover CIA agent in High Wire Act. With her star also on the rise for her Oscar-nominated performance in Gone Girl, one wonders whether such mainstream fare will become “beneath her”? If so, this may be among her final stops of at least tangential appeal, and with her character the focus of attention, the only one which reached the necessary threshold to qualify for inclusion on this site. Here, she plays Miranda, the victim of a brutal rape, whose orderly life is destroyed by the assault, yet who begins a long-distance relationship with her attacker (Fernandez). She claims this is a necessary part of the healing process, much to the disgust of her father (Nolte), who is concerned his daughter may be suffering from some variant of Stockholm Syndrome. However, are Miranda’s intentions quite as forgiving as they appear?

The existence of this review likely gives away the answer to that question, though the poster on the right (a Finnish one, emphasizing an element found in other publicity material) isn’t exactly avoiding the issue. And that’s the problem: the middle portion here, between the attack and the pay-off, more or less operates in a holding pattern, with the audience largely aware of where it’s going, yet the script still needs to put in the legwork to make its payoff credible. I can’t say it succeeds, leaning heavily on the fact that her attacker is a complete idiot, and like many rape-revenge films, also relies on the conceit that many rapists will have no problem hanging out with their victims after the event. I’ve no idea whether there is any psychological basis for fact in this, or if it’s just a convenient plot nicety. The other aspect which is kinda weird, is that Miranda isn’t actually a very nice person; a bit of a control-freak in many aspects of her life, and her lack of meaningful relationships is entirely unsurprising.

Between this and her subsequent actions, it appears the only reason the audience is given to care about her, is because she gets raped. Wait, what? I suppose the point might be, to show that sexual assault does not only happen to “nice” girls, but we’re not talking about a sociological study here. This is a work of fiction, and if you’re going to focus on a character with whom the audience is given no good reason to empathize, the film-makers had better be damn sure of their ground. Here, neither Mikati nor the writers are, even if Pike’s performance is decent, showing why I think she has potential as an action-heroine. This is left to operate in a vacuum, resulting in perhaps only the final 15-20 minutes achieving any degree of impact, and this is still muted, since you don’t care enough about anyone involved. Nowhere near as provocative or powerful as this needed to be.

Dir: Faoud Mikati
Star: Rosamund Pike, Shiloh Fernandez, Nick Nolte, Camryn Manheim

The Red Detachment of Women

★★½
“Carry out land reform!” and other popular Marxist refrains…

reddetachmentThis takes place in 1930, when the Communist revolution was really just getting under way, and Hainan, now the very southernmost part of China, was a hotbed of subversive activity. Wu Qionghua (Zhu) is a virtual slave, who had made frequent attempts to run away from her master, Nan Batian, but has always been caught. She is rescued by a kindly merchant, Hong Changqing (Wang) who is visiting her master and takes Qionghua into his service – as soon as they leave, he frees her, because it turns out he is an undercover operative for the Communists. Qionghua, filled with new-found political aspirations, heads for a nearby village where the Red Army is forming its first women’s army, linking up on the way with another member of the oppressed proletariat, Fu Honglian (Xiang). There, she convinces the commander of her earnest intentions and gets to join. However, her lust for personal revenge on Nan clouds her judgment as a soldier, and potentially puts her life at risk She will need to suppress her own desires – both for vengeance and for Hong – in the interests of the greater good and the Communist uprising.

A little reminiscent of The Forty-First, the big difference is that it built the characters first, and worked any political messages around them, rather than turning the actors into machines for spouting revolutionary polemic. Here, there are times when what comes out of Qionghua’s mouth appears to be straight out of the Little Red Book, which is quite off-putting. It could be down to poor translation in the subs, but considering she is supposed to be a peasant girl, and presumably uneducated, lines such as “Could you tell me why Secretary Changqing and our company commander are more knowledgeable and farsighted? Because they are communists?” are not exactly convincing. Nor are “spontaneous” chants of “Down with feudal rule! Carry out land reform! Overturn the feudal system!” Maybe audiences in sixties China needed to be whacked over the head; I’ve always found propaganda to be most effective when its subtle, and this isn’t. I occasionally expected scenes to finish with a Starship Troopers-esque caption: “Do you want to know more?”

But say what you like about communism – and “It’s a political system which is okay in theory, but a miserable failure in practice” would be close to my own view there – it has done a lot more than capitalism in embracing the GWG as part of culture. We already documented the Soviet approach in WW2, and here, the women’s army is not regarded as second-class soldiers in any way, and are portrayed the equals of their male counterparts, which is certainly laudable. Shame the battles themselves are a bit crap, with the running-dog reactionary lackeys hardly putting up a fight, save for one decent sequence where Wu’s platoon has to hold off an advancing surge by the opposition, while sustaining brutal losses. The same novel subsequently became a ballet: that might be slightly less heavy-handed with the propaganda, though I wouldn’t guarantee it!

Dir: Xie Jin
Star: Zhu Xijuan, Wang Xingang, Xiang Mei, Jin Naihua

Danger Dolls

★★★
“Fringe with fringes”

dangerdollsAn interesting alternate universe here, diverging at the end of World War II, where the horrific results of Hiroshima and Nagasaki triggered the world into abandoning, first, nuclear weapons and then eventually, all guns as well. In the present day, crime still exists, but it largely consists of people holding up banks with swords, for example. However, trouble lurks in this gun-free paradise, in the form of a parallel universe, which appears to have designs on ours, and is sending people through a wormhole, and replacing the ones on this side with the aim of establishing a bridgehead. Countering this threat are the titular quartet, led by Arisa (Hanai), who have the martial-arts skills to counter these “filthy invaders”, and can also see the blue glow which identifies natives from another dimension.

After successfully destroying five political figures who had taken the place of their counterparts on this side, things get more complex, with the next mission being to infiltrate a country retreat belonging to that political party, a venue recently visited by all five dimensional visitors. It’s decided by their boss that the girls will go under cover as an all-girl group of pop stars – the i.Dolls – using a tour as disguise for their activities, on the basis no-one will pay attention to a bunch of idol singers. Yeah. Not perhaps the soundest decision making ever, that. Exploring the ground, they find what looks like the innocent gateway to a Shinto shrine, only to discover it is actually cover for the wormhole. Confusing matters further, the parallel version of Arisa comes through from the other side where it turns out that she and the other three – hey, what are the odds? – actually are members of an all-girl group. This Arisa discovers that things are not quite as cut and dried as they seem, and that even their own origins may be other than they believe.

It’s likely a case where less plot would be more – and fewer Danger Dolls would probably be a better idea too. For as is, beyond Arisa and Ray (Takeda), there’s precious little characterization to be found for Miki and Mari, whose sole purpose for existing seems to be to justify the idol singer thing, because a singing duo would seem a bit crap. The action sequences are spottily impressive. It’s clear Takeda is head and shoulders above the others in terms of ability, though Hanai has her moments, and there are some nice moves. The most spectacular of these are apparently inspired by lucha libre, leaving me suitably impressed, and the lack of doubling and wire-work was also quite laudable. However, the need to slice up the screen time between four protagonists does leave the battles feeling choppy, and it’s only once the herd is thinned at the end – I’ll say no more – that proceedings achieve the necessary fluidity. There’s no doubt Takeda still has star potential; as with her earlier movies, however, this vehicle for her talent falls short of its main ingredient.

Dir: Shûsuke Kaneko
Star: Rumi Hanai, Rina Takeda, Kayano Masuyama, Nana Seino

The World Before Her

★★★
“Beauties and the beasts?”

worldbeforeherI love the double meaning of the title, which could mean either, “the world in front of her” or “the world of the past”. Both would be appropriate for the this documentary, which focuses on two contradictory and opposite facets of modern Indian culture, though both are redefining the ways in which women are portrayed. On the one hand, you have Ruhi Singh, a participant in the Miss India contest. In India, beauty pageants seem to have an unexpectedly feminist position, in contrast to how they are often seen in the west, as “cattle markets”; it’s pointed out, beauty is one of the few areas in Indian society where women and their opinions are seen as the equals of men. Then there is Prachi Trivedi, a young woman and fervent Hindu nationalist, fighting against exactly that kind of decadent Western culture, training with the Durga Vahini, the woman’s wing of a group that has been described as neo-terrorist in nature, and who protested against Miss World when the contest came to India in 1996.

The contrast between the two is certainly stark: Singh is elegant, clearly modern in outlook and does not believe foreign culture poses any threat to India. Trivedi, on the other hand, eschews make-up, years for a past unsullied by modern culture, and regards both Christians and Muslims as the enemy [as one training camp attendee puts it, in a thinly-veiled threat, “We have learned to use guns and we’ll use them if we have to. We will kill people if we need to”]. Yet, she rebels against her father’s beliefs that a woman’s first – indeed, sole – duty is marriage and having children, and readily acknowledges the inherent contradiction in being devoted to an organization that is intent on continuing to repress her. The film appears to be saying that the two are not too different in nature, sharing an independent streak – under other circumstances (and, probably, a makeover for Prachi), perhaps could be friends.

However, I’m not sure the film has too much more to say than that. It certainly doesn’t have anything new to add about the beauty pageant aspects, in part because Ruhi is fairly guarded and self-aware of her image, reluctant to commit to too much. This is not an issue for Prachi and her friends, who seem happy to speak candidly, not apparently caring about any potential reaction to soundbites such as, ‘Frankly, I hate Gandhi’. Personally, I found this made her a much more interesting character, compared to the pretty but bland Singh. About the sole startling revelation on this side of the cinematic equation was an almost casual admission that one contestant was almost aborted after her parents found out they were having a girl. Such is the contradiction of contemporary India, a society that in some ways is forging ahead, yet in others remains rooted in the past. The tension between these aspects has the potential to cause enormous issues as the country moves in to the future.

Dir: Nisha Pahuja

Female Prisoner Sigma

★★½
“Prisoner Cell-Block Meh”

sigmaAdding a somewhat supernatural twist to the women in prison genre, the heroine is Ryou Kanzaki (Hamada), sentenced to ten years for killing one of the men who tormented her late sister, Manami. She died in jail, under mysterious circumstances, in the feared “Special Housing Unit One”, a segregation block. The official verdict was suicide, but Ryou is having none of that, and requests to be sent to the same complex. She soon hears whispers that “An evil force is making people go crazy,” and also learns of the titular Sigma, a legendary inmate who acts as an avenging force for abused inmates in prisons around the country, taking revenge for them before vanishing and moving on to her next task. Ryou quickly finds out that the management in this establishment don’t believe she is there to “atone for her sins”, and have no interest in the truth about Manami coming out. Not just sleazy Warden Shibayama either, but his even creepier boss, who seems to be some kind of psychic vampire, powered by fear and hate. Ryou is going to have to put aside her scruples and cozy up to Shibayama, if she wants to find out what happened to Manami.

For the genre, it’s relatively tame, not that it should be mistaken for a Disney production. Still, with only one entirely gratuitous sex scene, though a fair amount of bondage/S&M, it’s at least trying to be more than thinly-disguised porn, and credit for making the effort – occasionally, with some success – to generate a spooky atmosphere. It seems to be trying for something along the lines of the Female Convict Scorpion series, creating a character whose exploits are the stuff of folklore. The problem here is, what we see is hardly legendary: when she eventually makes herself known, Sigma’s exploits are not exactly the stuff of which myths are made. Though, I grant, her ability to spit needles with unerring accuracy is quite impressive. Hamada’s performance is also too low-key to be memorable; she’s no Meiko Kaji, capable of commanding the viewer’s attention through sheer presence. Indeed, the same is true for the rest of the cast; I watched this less than 24 hours ago, and I’m struggling to remember any of their faces.

However, it is an effort to push the genre in something of a new direction, and Sasuga squeezes every yen’s worth out of his budget [even if this extends to a prison containing about a dozen inmates and a handful of guards]. The ending is clearly intended to open the door to an ongoing franchise, although there is no record anything ever came of it, which leaves things instead lacking in resolution. Largely forgettable, yet I’d probably rather have this than be actively repelled, like some in the field.

Dir: Sasuke Sasuga
Star: Shoko Hamada, Koichi Kitamura, Momo Izawa, Kyoumi, Moonsu

RWBY

rwby★★★★
“Harriet Potter and the F-sized Weapon”

There are occasionally times where our book reviewer Werner’s “split scale” of grades for both artistic merit and action, would come in handy. This is one of those times. For the action scenes here are as glorious as you would expect from the man behind Dead Fantasy, virtuoso symphonies of exquisite hyper-violence, meted out and absorbed by characters and monsters without fear or bias, in ways limited only – and not very much, at that – by the creator’s imagination. Probably inevitably, this overshadows a fairly perfunctory plot, and characters whose characterization is largely defined by the shade they wear. On a split scale, this would merit five stars for both the quantity and quality of action, but likely three or three and a half for artistic merit.

It takes place in the world of Remnant, in a three-cornered struggle between humanity, the monstrous Creatures of Grimm, and the Faunus, who are part-animal, part-human, and largely perceived as second-class citizens, despite their own talents. There’s a substance called “Dust” which has magical powers, and an academy where young men and women train as Hunters and Huntresses, to do battle with the Grimm. The focus is on four teenage girls who are part of this year’s new intake, and who end up forming team RWBY [pronounced “Ruby”]: Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna and Yang Xiao Long: the last is yellow-themed, you should be able to figure out the others. The main nemesis is Roman Torchwick, a terrorist who is working with a group fighting for Faunus’ rights, yet who had entirely his own agenda – as well as some high-powered minions and skills of his own.

Originally a web series, the first and second seasons have now been collected into feature-length collections, and while their episodic nature is occasionally apparent, they probably work better that way. The opening takes a little while to hit its stride, as it has to create the world, introduce the characters and establish the situations. The animation style takes some getting used to: it’s done in CGI, but trying to look like traditional cel animation; some of the resulting movement is almost too smooth, and I find the lack of noses on some of the characters, a bit unsettling. However, the script is well-written, sometimes sharp and witty, occupying a good place between self-awareness and parody. Even the characters that are largely superfluous – and some of the hunters in training could be so described – are less irritating than they might be.

It is, however, all about the action, and it’s clear that all of the other aspects – the plot, the participants and the world they inhabit – exist merely to facilitate the fight scenes, which is where all the work, imagination and energy become truly apparent.  The highlight, for me, in volume one, was a battle at a temple against a series of Grimm, while the second part climaxes with a running fight in, on and around, a train as it hurtles toward the capital city. You forget they are animated, while simultaneously wishing someone would throw $200 million at the studio behind it, Rooster Teeth, and let them make a live-action version. Sadly, creator Oum died of a severe allergic reaction in February this year, although it has been announced that Volume Three of the series will continue. Hopefully, the quality will not suffer, and will be a fitting monument to Oum’s sadly-missed talents.

Dir: Monty Oum
Star (voice): Lindsay Jones, Kara Eberle, Arryn Zech, Barbara Dunkelman

Abeceda straha (The Alphabet of Fear)

★★½
“Croat in the act”

abecedastrahaIt’s late 1943, during the Second World War: Yugoslavia is still occupied by Axis forces and their sympathizers, but with Italy now invaded, the end seems near. Local partisans find themselves infiltrated by collaborator spies; to find out who they are, they send Vera (Bojanic) into the house of the Bolner family, whose patriarch (Zappalorto) works for a bank and is believed to have a list of the spies. Her cover is basically playing dumb, for who would suspect illiterate servant girl Katica of being a partisan? However, it’s not as easy to play dumb as you might think, especially when one of the family’s daughters takes it upon herself to teach Katica how to read and write. Vera also has to handle unexpected visitors who recognize her, suspicious German officers and surprise searches, while communicating what she finds back to her handler. The list, however, remains elusive, until one night when an Allied bombing raid sends the family and their dinner-party guests to the cellar, perhaps giving Vera the chance to find what she has been seeking.

Set almost entirely inside the family’s house, the film is very good at generating a tense, paranoid atmosphere, where any knock at the door could signal the end of your life, during a time where the secret police had almost unlimited powers. The problem is, that”s just about all it does, and up until the final 10 minutes or so, there is an evenness of tone and approach which ends up being quite soporific. As should probably be expected from a movie produced during the Cold War, when Yugoslavia was ruled with an iron hand by Marshal Tito, it’s not exactly subtle on the characterization front, with the heroic Communist partisans being the good guys, while ze Germans and their (admittedly, very nasty)  local collaborators, the Ustaše, villainous to a T. If not exactly caricatures, there’s not much attempt made to make them human About the only character with depth is Bolner, whom you sense is operating out of a sense of expediency, to protect his family, rather than any deeply-held belief in National Socialist principles. It does also rely on Bond villain acts, in particular Vera being shown the list, when there is absolutely no need to do so.

Bojanic does a decent enough job of portraying the heroine, striving to maintain her persona and be as unobtrusive as possible, while taking any chance to ferret through her boss’s possessions in search of that list. Unfortunately, this is a over-simplistic story, definitely in need of further fleshing out with plot twists and turns, if it was to have a decent chance of resonating with a modern audience. While my interest just about survived, there were some dicey moments.

Dir: Fadil Hadžić
Star: Vesna Bojanic, Josip Zappalorto, Nada Kasapic, Tatjana Beljakova