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Black Cat, White Cat Movie Review

Black Cat, White Cat is a 1998 Serbian comedy film directed by Emir Kusturica and starring Srdjan Todorovic. It’s such a bad, frustratingly annoying movie.

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“The Bulgarians always say:

Brother, if you can’t solve a problem with money…

solve it with a lot of money“

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It follows a gypsy family and their various misadventures and entangled stories, crazy situations and silly developments. This movie literally has everything I strongly dislike in a movie – it has no point to it whatsoever, it lacks any message or themes and it’s simply irrelevant and just another forgettable comedy. That’s why it’s never up to par with the director’s best movies.

Emir Kusturica is a hit-or-miss director for me. I like some of his movies, but this is certainly the one I disliked strongly. Whereas in ‘Underground’ and ‘Dom za vesanje’ he did fuel the story with messages, themes and emotion, here he simply exhibits all of his worst tendencies with nothing deeper to counterpoint it.

By the worst tendencies I mean first and foremost the tendency to literally copy the works of Fellini, this time around he entirely copied the style, approach and comedy type of ‘Amarcord’. Having in mind that I really disliked that film, of course I could not care for this one either.

So the movie is filled with very annoying humor which ranges from abrupt to stupid to vulgar and none of it made me laugh whatsoever. So it fails as a comedy. It has its romantic moments which are fine, but for the most part it’s a failed black comedy. The movie is a gypsy soap opera with entirely unrealistic plot points and situations and with many crazy, ridiculous developments which are supposed to make you either laugh or amuse, but they personally infuriated me how pointless and stupid they are. The movie is entirely implausible in its plot.

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This is not to say that Black Cat, White Cat doesn’t have its moments which it certainly does have. The German ship passing by was a very nice scene and I really liked the romantic storyline too. The role of animals and the titular cats as the symbols was also good. But otherwise the movie is an overlong, badly paced, uninteresting and pointless mess. It’s very well shot and scored per usual for a Kusturica movie, but it lacks thematic and emotional resonance to elevate its very bad material. It’s also well acted, but the characters are so weak that it doesn’t matter at all.

Black Cat, White Cat has its moments as some scenes are quite memorable, but otherwise it’s a mess. Although well shot and well scored per usual for a Kusturica movie, it features all of his worst tendencies – ridiculous, implausible plot points, annoying humor, underdeveloped characters and a lack of any point, themes or message to it whatsoever. He literally here copied the worst of Fellini’s works.

My Rating – 2