Loving Glances

Description

It is 1995 post war Croatia and handsome, lonely Labud misses his girlfriend Vida, when the lovers were separated during the Balkins war. He hopes to reunite with her, but knows the chances are such that they never will. After a series of disasterous dates, from a computer dating service, he finally meets and falls in love with the beautiful Romana. This lovely and funny romantic film shows refugees trying to eke out a normal life against the strange and scary landscape of a post-war country.

Customer Reviews:

Adorable Romantic Comedy in an Unlikely Atmosphere ..........2006-12-30

Labud ("Swan") is a lonely young man who was displaced by the 1990s Balkan War to Belgrade ... He lives in a shelter and does odd jobs to make ends meet. He wants to reconnect with his old flame a hairdresser by trade named Vida who managed to escape after the war to Chicago. Swan tries meeting girls in Belgrade but most ignore him and look the other way. His last hope is to join a computer dating service, Happy Millenium. He provides details of what interests him and what he is looking for in the opposite sex after which he gets to view videos of close matches for a rendevous at a designated location. During one such meeting at the Happy Millenium office, Swan makes eye contact with a client, a lovely pretty girl named Romana who is about his age. The receptionist discourages such a face-to-face meeting stating, he can only meet anonomously with a client who has a letter/number designation and meets the criteria set up by the computer ...

During the intervals when Swan is working and walking around Belgrade, he believes he sees Vida at times but shakes this thought from his mind knowing she is in Chicago. One of the best creative aspects of the film is how, he has imaginery conversations with the ghosts of his mother and old school professor who provide him advice and admonish him during his searches for love. Swan tries to get papers to legally leave Belgrade to visit Chicago but there is a long list and he does not meet the guidelines. Around this time, Vida really is in Belgrade looking for Swan and trying to revive their old love, the problem is she can not locate him. She leaves a note on a "missing persons" bulletin board ... She just missed running into Swan in person.

During a computer-match rendevous Swan goes to the meeting location but quickly does a turn-around as his "match" is one of the older women whom he does not like ... Later, he returns to the site only to find that Romana is standing there apparetnly waiting for someone. She is the one he was interested in the most at the computer dating service. He introduces himself and they gradually hit it off. She tries very hard to impress him with her knowledge of Belgrade slang and the cool hang out places in the city. Swan follows her one night after a date, and discovers she lives in similar straits as himself, doing menial work at a restaurant. He confronts her and they have a heart-to-heart talk, understanding both are refugees from the Balkan War, trying to make their way in the world. Romana has ghostly advisers of her own, her sister, her father, and old lover and various other relatives from the past ... who comment on her activities and keep advising her on the "dos"and "don'ts" of relationships ...

The film comes to a climax when the Happy Millenium group has an excursion where the clientel mix and match during a dance at the seaside ... Different couples intermingle and the antics are hilarious. The leader of the Happy Millenium group tries to keep the peace and balance out the relationships. At some point in the distant past, Swan and Romana had a falling out due to circumstances and cultural differences which were pointed out by their "ghosts". Both Swan and Romana had advisers who aided and abbetted in breaking up their relationship. Essentially the couple was miserable without each other ... Around this time, Swan was given a letter from a Happy Millenium client who picked it up off the missing persons bulletin board - it was from Vida. The film does a terrific wind-up ending which takes all the loose ends of the film and ties them together into a very satisfying finish ... for everyone involved. Along the way, one discovers some fascinating bits of "family secrets" as the ghostly visitors reminisce about their past ...
This is one outstanding film. It will impress anyone who loves romantic comedy which mixes cultural differences within a surreal atmosphere. Erika Borsos (pepper flower)

Imaginative, Literary Romantic Comedy--a first class effort.......2005-12-05

first-class effort by Radivoje Andric, a young Serb director about couples in love during the Yugoslav conflict. At times sentimental, the story and incidents are original, imaginative and the characters are great too. A Serb intellectual who lives a desolate life as a political refugee in Belgrade misses his girlfriend who has emigrated to America. He imagines that his girlfriend is with her to keep him company, and then he imagines a whole cast of people from his past to keep him company during his homeless wanderings through Belgrade. We're never quite sure of how deluded he is; does the girl really exist? Are they really engaged? Then he meets a girl-a real girl-not an imaginary one- who forces him to deal with his realities and make choices. This film-which took a long time to be made because of the Yugoslavia conflict-doesn't get bogged down in politics-but it shows the effects of these events on ordinary people. Too bad it couldn't have been released (for example) in 1999 to give Americans a glimpse of Yugoslavs as a people not merely as a patchwork of ethnic tribes at war with one another. The settings and situations are bleak, but the people are charming, a mixture of the old-fashioned and hip. Don't miss the "computerized dating service" scenes and the matchmaker-they are great fun, if not a little sad. The female lead, Ivana Bolanca is charming and mysterious and vulnerable. Senad Alihodzic, the male lead is thoughtful, happy-go-lucky and bursting with poetry and optimism. I found myself wishing the scenes with imaginary characters could be shortened a bit, and that Ivan Bolanca's character could be fleshed out a bit-she too seemed like a mere romantic projection sometimes. Still, America needs more dreamers like Radivoje Andric to make movies.

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