Winning ways | 16 December 2006

This Bosnian film about the devastating emotional consequences of war has all the things you might expect from a Bosnian film about the devastating emotional consequences of war: suffering; pain; Soviet-style concrete estates with stinking stairwells; drab little apartments; dreary knitwear; hard-faced people tramping wearily though the slush and the snow; more suffering; more pain, more slush, more snow. But if this sounds like bad news let me tell you the good: there isn’t a single tap-dancing penguin in it. And here is the even better news: this is a gem of a movie. Or at least I think it is a gem of a movie.

I’m a little worried now that I only think this because I am so fed up with what mainstream Hollywood is currently offering. I don’t hate mainstream Hollywood movies as a rule — I cried throughout Brokeback Mountain; even made embarrassing gulping noises — but I just can’t take any more puerile animations or those rom-com narratives in which all contradictions are magically resolved in the happy ending you not only saw coming from a mile off, but seem scarcely worth keeping awake for.