Radmila Djurica

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 Today there are many films that talk about adulteries and love affairs, especially in France. Ever since 1958 French film about adultery Les Amants directed by Louis Malle with Jeanne Moreau rediscovered human nature. While in 1965, French director Agnès Varda created a minor shock wave in American film with her release of film Happiness (Le Bonheur), a film that openly confronted the topic of adultery in an era before the conception of “open marriage.” And another French film of this era went further with the topic with Jean-Luc Godard's A Married Woman (Une femme mariée, 1964), where is the wife, not the husband, is danger to moral society with rather familiar Brechtian distanced style.  

Ever since early days there has been a fascination about adultery on screen, no matter of political regimes or states. The admiration for energy and imagination of a good love (adultery) stories outside of marriage has always existed. Our fellow mammals, males or females are invariably common with aggressive sexual adventurers, driven by their genes to couple with as many partners as possible. But human with consciences and cultural boundaries can choose how to act upon an impulse or to suppress it. It is a pretty damn  complex issue that involves ramifications on moral, emotional and social fields. A primal motivation that subjects adultery on film is common to all cinematographies in the world, as a common for identification factor (in order to find an identification code, important for interracial and international political including understanding). Something that was not taken as important for domestic film, overloaded with social subjects of postwar stories. I am talking about identification factor to be recognised abroad or in USA: Grlić lives and works in Ohio, USA.

So, in March 2010 Belgrade in Serbia roared with interest and curiousity because Croatian filmmaker Rajko Grlić, made an erotic film, a common surprise for everyone. Today, film directors in Croatia are most of the time, making postwar dramas, but no one dares to explore on-screen erotic relationships between man and woman on such aesthetical level. And believe me the film is very aesthetical. I really hope that adultery, charismatic visionaries and sexy outlaws will be present more on screen, and will soon replace post civile war stories in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia. Such a compelling drama is understood perfectly everywhere in the world, and with no hypocrisy displays adultery as an everyday reality. As I said before, sex scenes here, are highly aesthetical and indeed the most provoking in Croatian film for quite some time now. A beautiful and cruel reality virtues out of this elegant and smooth (melo)drama!  “There is a claim in sociology that adultery, love adventure or whatever you call it, is the only way of rebellion left for men against life’s predictability. It is extremely open, and from time to time brutal, especially when dealing with intimate topics, with an effort to go under the skin, beyond visible,” Grlić explained.

Good old sexy drama may mean a new start for Grlić, because it seems that almost no other Rajko’s film existed before. It is a feeling that tells a little about this director. He has great talent, but no will (or financies) to work with. It is hard to discuss the issue without getting into a contradiction that relates to cinematography’s general state in film on territory of Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia etc..

 So, what is under the smooth city surface of middle class in Croatia? Grlić’s new film Just Between Us  www.justbetweenusmovie.com a manner comedy drama, return’s Grlić to his roots (and old Jugoslavian Cinematography). Balkan Cinema really needs an erotic mood-set films. After all, this is why French films are so popular in Serbia. And film Just Between Us is story about loneliness and adultery where emotions and erotic life goes through a roof top. Here Miki Manojlović, a Serb actor has returned to Croatian erotic drama in another directorial of Rajko Grlić.  Grlić and Manojlović have worked together fourth times and their relationship proves to be successful. And mind you, French Cinematography knows Manojlović very well by his French films. (Manojlović at the moment shoots Largo Winch: The Burma Conspiracy II, where he stars next to Sheron Stone-talking about erotica). 

About Rajko Grlić

Grlić is one of the most popular author in the contemporary Croatian cinema and  represent of the old Croatian film as well. He graduated a feature film directing at FAMU Film Academy in Prague, Czech Republic and by now he has directed and co-written about ten feature films. His films have been showed and distributed all around the world and it has been visited many major film festivals, among the rest Cannes Film Festival as well: received about fifty international awards (for instance Tokyo International Film Festival “Grand Prix” and “Best Director”). Nowaday Grlić works at Film Department at Ohio University www.finearts.ohio.edu/film.

Next time more about Serbian film!