ZILLION film :: White Suit : Belo Odelo


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"THE YUGOSLAV CINEMA HAS MADE US A GIFT THIS YEAR"…

The Yugoslav cinema has made us a gift this year in spite of the fact that the annual production has been less than a doyen films. After the great success of Emir Kusturica's "White Cat Black Cat" (Silver Lion in Venice in 1998) and Goran Paskaljivic's "Powder Keg" (Best European Film / FIPRESCI 1998) we have before us "The White Suit" by Lazar Ristovski who is producer, writer, director and lead character. Listing these names there is a sense of a kindred spirit. It is a logical evolution, after the triumph in the role of Crni in Kusturica's "Underground" (Golden Palm / Cannes 1995) and the striking and unforgettable performance in the "Powder Keg". As a mature actor, Ristovski belongs to the world elite of actors - not only in Belgrade where he is revered like Depardieu in Paris.

This time he plays sergeant major Savo Tiodorovic, aged 45, a bachelor that writes poetry for his own pleasure, reads classics and dreams of an acting career. Having clearly defined himself with an off-camera inner dialogue, sufficient to give us his main characteristics, the hero surfaces as a dreamer hovering above memories and wishes, troubled by the dilemma: "to stay true to the past or to turn to the future". The opening monologue stresses: "Soldiers like myself wear camouflage uniforms to avoid being seen by the enemy, but lamentably friends cannot se us either!". This witty paradox offers a tragicomic, bittersweet flavor to the entire movie, taking us back to the golden era of the Yugoslav film with Slobodan Šijan's "Ko to tamo peva" as the archetype.

In this film the lead character is on a train heading to his destination: his mother's funeral. The set is a bit shifted: the unity of place - a train pulled by a steam locomotive as if it had been deliberately brought back by the author with a time machine; the unity of time: everything happens in two days, the first being the day of the finale of the Soccer World Championships in France; unity of action: the inevitable voyage confronts our hero with numerous incidental but quintessential characters, some of which are not at all appealing to us. The monstrously struck balance - thanks to the firm structure - between contradictory elements, the challenges that introduce comical scenes almost venturing into gags, a light sense of paranoia, the fear of the invisible enemy and the irresistible need for immediate fulfillment of all desires, the thirst that can be quenched only by true feelings. Ever since Fellini we have seldom had the opportunity to see such a successful merger of surreal and real, especially in two scenes that the "great masestro" would have gladly signed: the fish tank striptease scene when the little siren swims in a shanty town bordello and the one when the lead character says "I love you" in a hundred languages thus creating the magic which synthesizes westerns movies and old fashioned romantic drama. "The White Suit" is a film in favor of peace, telling us clearly that this world of ours is a great medley and that is quite all right.

Jean Roy

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WHITE SUIT THE NOVEL

THE WHITE SUIT AMONG THE GREAT ONES