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Pored mene Movie Review

Pored mene is 2015 Serbian coming-of-age drama film directed by Stevan Filipovic and starring Hristina Popovic, Slaven Doslo and Nikola Glisic. It’s a very messy movie.

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“Svetlana, gubimo ih,

uskoro više nećemo govoriti istim jezikom kao oni“

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Through a series of very implausible scenarios, an entire high school class is locked in a school. Suddenly without phones, they are forced to confront their inner fears and interpersonal issues. First off, I have to comment Filipovic for actually making a somewhat believable modern teenage movie in a country that doesn’t really tell these kinds of stories. Although he has a lot of growth ahead of him, this was a fine third effort overall, though some glaring issues marred the whole production.

The movie is a lot and by that I mean that it deals with so many issues facing teenagers growing in Serbian society that the final product felt overly chaotic in execution. The movie examines not just homophobia and the pressures of being gay in this environment, but also the problematic relationship between Croats and Serbs, classism, the right versus the left, jealousy, and sexual insecurities and so on and so forth.

Clearly, for a movie such as this one, younger people in their twenties will undoubtedly find it the most relatable as they’ve experienced these years quite recently. As for myself, I found it both immensely relatable and highly unrealistic depending on the situation and the character as the movie is again all over the place.

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I have to commend the casting of younger actors as teenagers. That decision was the right one as it made their characters much more believable. The way they talked, cursed and confronted each other was very much grounded in reality. However, what wasn’t so plausible was the idea that this entire class is composed of delinquents. Even worse, the idea that anybody at this age would be thinking and talking about politics in such a passionate manner rang false to me.

So, what I’m saying is that had the director left politics aside and some of these other issues as well, the movie would have been much better. The treatment of homophobia was pretty solid. That entire speech by the gay student was excellent and quite moving. The sequence in the shower was overly pornographic in its execution, but it was still memorable and very well acted. The final sequence with the nerd character’s speech hit home for me the most as I was pretty much invisible back in high school as well.

These moments elevate what is otherwise a highly chaotic picture. Pored mene did not need to deal with so many of these issues. The beauty is in the minimalism and that is what Filipovic needs to learn. Had he focused on just a couple of themes, the whole film would have been much more effective. This way, it felt disorganized and cluttered.

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The drama has too many characters. I had a problem with that obviously as one and a half hours simply isn’t enough to deal with all of these characters properly. With that being said, the acting is so good, the casting was excellent and the standouts are definitely Hristina Popovic as a pretty memorable and believable professor and Slaven Doslo as the movie’s most heartbreaking character. The dialogue can be surprisingly strong at times, but the script was overly busy, the sound wasn’t great and the directing overall could have been stronger. But the cinematography is actually solid and ‘The Breakfast Club’ influences are quite welcome.