Friday, December 8
Black Cat, White Cat (maps 1, 2, 3)
dir. Emir Kusturica, Yugoslavia 1998

Matko is a small time hustler, living by the Danube with his 17 year old son Zare. After a failed business deal he owes money to the much more successful gangster Dadan. Dadan has a sister, Afrodita, that he desperately wants to see get married so they strike a deal: Zare is to marry her. But none of the two care much for an arranged marriage: Zare is in love with Ida, Afrodita is waiting for the man of her dreams.

 

The lighter side of Emir Kusturica's boisterous talent is let loose in "Black Cat, White Cat." It's a mad scramble through the Felliniesque realm of Kusturica's imagination, and it proves nothing if not this much: give this man the Danube, Gypsy musicians and a camera, and you've got a party.

The starting point for "Black Cat, White Cat" was Kusturica's idea of making a documentary about the tuba-toting musicians who roamed through "Underground." He evidently hoped to dispel some of the gloom inherent in that film's vision of his native Yugoslavia, and he began (with Gordan Mihic) to dream up a cheerfully absurd fable that would do the trick. - Janet Maslin, nytimes.com