European Films

Balkan comedy just keeps getting zanier with every outing of its most famous filmmaking son Emir Kusturica, who presents his latest film Zavet (Promise Me This) in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Kusturica has twice won the Palme d’Or here: for the decidedly more serious  efforts Underground and When Father Was Away on Business. The Sarajevo-born director confirms with Zavet that, rather than a straightforward filmmaker, he has become the ringmaster of his own cinematic circus that returns each two years or so to your town with a slightly different show performed by pretty much the same group of performers. Newcomers and big fans of Kusturica's comedies will be delighted and should book first-row seats -- even though Zavet completely misses the emotional resonance or satire of his best films -- while returning visitors should opt for the cheap seats.

 

The story involves the young peasant boy Tsane (newcomer Uros Milovanovic), who is sent into town by his ailing grandfather (Aleksander Bercek, from his previous film Zivot je cudo / Life is a Miracle) to sell their cow, buy a souvenir and a religious icon and find a wife for himself --  though the boy is practically prepubescent. After having eyed the breasts of Bosa (Ljiljana Blagojevic, who starred in Kusturica’s debut film in 1981), the third and only other citizen of their mountain village, he takes their loyal cow and leaves.

 

What follows is the strictly picaresque adventure of young Tsane that only aims for laughs and cares little about such matters as economy of narrative, character development, the laws of gravity or even common sense.

 

The baddies Tsane encounters in the city are led by the evil boss played by Kusturica regular Miki Manojlovic, who currently also stars in Irina Palm as another seedy Eastern European character. The grandsons of a shoemaker friend in town are on little Tsane’s side, however, as are his possible future bride Jasna (Mirja Petronijevic) and her mother, who also happens to work in the boss’s bordello.

 

There is almost no political content to speak of bar a stray soldier’s helmet used by Tsane as a container for his cat’s milk, a barb at the address of NATO and the phrase "there is not enough love in this world," uttered by one of the characters after a particularly cartoony, western-style shoot-out. Gags involving complicated contraptions are many, as are various types of physical harm that befalls characters and animals of all ages and sexes. Not only the cow but all the characters are milked for all their comic potential and like all Kusturica films Zavet would have benefited from a tighter edit. 

  

This film was screened as part of the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.