A Radically Different Slovenian Film

Vinko Möderndorfer is a very prolific author. He writes resounding short stories, novels, poems, comedies, essays, directs theatre plays and makes television documentaries; since last Wednesday he is also a director of a feature film. The film Suburbs was made after his novel with the same title. The text had two obvious weaknesses. It was very straightforward and readable almost like a comic book or a sequence of scenes. Readability in itself is not a weakness - in contrary. The writer's ability to tell the story fluently and in meaningful sequences is actually the advantage of the film. (By the way, does this mean that a feature film is a less complex art form than a novel?)

To make a long story short, Suburbs is one of the few Slovenian films in the last ten years that is able to tell its story as a whole and does not disintegrate into a sequence of loosely connected situations. And it has one more feature that radically distinguishes it from the majority of the contemporary Slovenian films: its story, or, more precisely, its topic. The topic is supposed to be obvious ­- the film should focus on the xenophobic attitude of Slovenians to foreigners. This topic is present in several contemporary Slovenian films; however, for Suburbs it is not of utmost importance.

The film focuses on a small group of four middle-aged men, who have no past and no future. They live from day to day and spend their free time at the bowling alley; however, they only drink there and never bowl. One day one of them gets new neighbours, a man and a woman; it is obvious from their names that they are foreigners. First, one of this group of friends is bothered by their lively love life; later the rest of the friends share his sentiments. This is enough to make way for intolerant thoughts, generalised judgements and offensive remarks, which evolve into fascist acts. At this point metonymy, which would cause us to interpret Möderndorfer's four friends and their attitude to the young couple as a characteristic Slovenian intolerance of foreigners, might be tempting. However, such an interpretation would miss the grimness of the story of the film. Namely, Möderndorfer's middle-aged characters are not only intolerant of the young couple; they're also intolerant of Slovenian youth, their relatives, and intolerance often erupts among themselves.

So Suburbs is, above all, a resounding film on intolerance, but not only intolerance for those who are different, but intolerance as a way of solving conflicts in life. That, of course, is a much broader subject than xenophobia, which is only a manifestation of this attitude.

The film overcomes another weakness of the novel. The middle-aged men in the novel were homogenous negative characters, with whom no latent intolerant person could identify and which were a priori judged by everyone; however, the film offers a number of indications that enable the viewer to comprehend what crippled the four companions. So one of them is a latent homosexual, the other one is an unrealised macho, the third one a mama's boy who has never grown up, and the fourth one is emotionally alienated. So, their common denominator would be unrealized emotions and generally unrealized lives. However, instead of persisting and searching for their share of happiness or a moment of love they also remain apathetic when they're daydreaming. Of course, everything threatens such people: the happiness of neighbours, wishing for tenderness, emotions, a simplest question... What is so horrible with people who have been impaired in such a way is that the only emotion they feel and express is hatred, and this hatred manifests itself in violence.

To put it somewhat pathetically: hell is unrealised lives. And, as hell has no exit, there is also no exit from Möderndorfers suburbs.

Or is there an exit? The author of the film does not offer any guidance for salvation - instead he just hints at it: in the world full of fascism the simplest human act is the implosion of catharsis. So the end of the film is at least a bit optimistic in comparison to the novel.

A word or two on the actors. The film offers four complex negative characters ­- which is a real rarity for Slovenian film. These negative characters are very convincing; that's why the actors - Renato Jenček, Peter Musevski (has he received the award of the Prešeren's fund yet?), Jernej Šugman and Silvo Božič ­- deserve all praise. Tadej Toš in his role of a foreigner is also convincing; the same is true of Alenka Cilenšek, Maja Lešnik, Silva Čušin, Marinka Štern and Katarina Stegnar in supporting roles.

And the conclusion... Suburbs will not be a hit; it is far too cruel for that - for many people it is even unbearable and politically provocative. However, this does not change the fact that Vinko Möderndorfer has, in co-operation with the director of photography Dušan Joksimović, composer Jani Golob and editor Andrija Zafranović, made one of the best Slovenian films in the last ten years, more accurately, after Košak's Outsider and Šterk's minimalist masterpiece Express Express.

Marko Golja, Radio Slovenija / Dialogi