(Originally reviewed on Aug. 13, 2022)
A natural choice to open Sarajevo film festival’s official competition section, Bosnian writer-director Aida Begic plays some enjoyable meta-textual games with her baggy but formally adventurous new feature A Ballad. Drawing its plot from a well-known, much-filmed 19th century folk poem Hasanaginica, while pointedly subverting the original text’s conservative sexual politics, this low-budget production meanders a little too much, but ultimately delivers a rich mix of comedy, drama and social critique. The regional humour and literary references may not travel far, but the witty treatment of universal themes should ensure more festival slots and possible art-house interest. Begic is a feted Euro-fest veteran, after all, winning a Cannes prize with her debut Snow (2008), but this is her first hometown world premiere. She is also involved with another Sarajevo premiere this year, Balkan Noir TV crime series The Hollow, on which she shares directing credits with Oscar-winner Danis Tanovic.
Played with a hint of soulful mischief by Bosnian Juliette Binoche-a-like Marija Pikic, the heroine of A Ballad is Meri, a 30-year-old wife and mother who moves back into the family home with her overbearing mother Zafira (Jasna Žalica) and feckless younger brother Kemo (Enes Kozlicic) following her acrimonious break-up with moody, broody Hasan (Milan Tocinovski). With Hasan refusing all contact, Meri hires lawyer Samir (Slaven Vidak) to try and fight for custody of her daughter Mila (Gaia Tanovic). But the comically pompous Samir has a shady agenda of his own. Exploiting Meri’s financial vulnerability and illegal marriage to Hasan, he tries to manipulate his client into marrying him instead, to safeguard her economic security and protect her “reputation” against malicious gossip,
In a traditional folk ballad, Meri would be a pliant supporting player in her own life story, dutifully succumbing to her miserable, restricted, tragic destiny as the plaything of entitled menfolk. But Begic has other plans for her, gifting her heroine more feminist autonomy and kick-ass attitude. Defying small-minded friends and relatives, she auditions for a role in a film project and turns down Samir as a highly unsuitable suitor, a scene of hilariously awkward farce which serves as one of the film’s comic high points. Meri also renews her friendship with former school classmate Adela (Lana Stanišic), a hedonistic glamazon hairdresser who carries a gun in her purse at all times, mainly as protection against her jailed husband’s lowlife associates. Applying the “Chekhov’s rifle” rule, that gun inevitably makes a dramatic appearance later in the plot, with life-changing consequences.
Initially planned as bigger European co-production, A Ballad was first announced seven years ago, but Begic put the project on pause when the chance arose to work with Syrian war orphans on a different feature, Never Leave Me (2017). Further delayed by Covid, the finished version of this film became a different beast to its original concept, a more locally focussed production with a much smaller budget and a mixed cast peppered with non-professionals.
These skimpy resources are sometimes a little too evident. A clumsy subplot about Kemo’s clashes with a pair of low-level gangsters over unpaid debts is amateurish and derivative, and could probably have been excised from a sprawling film that already feels overlong. That said, Begic and her team mostly turn financial limitation into creative innovation on A Ballad. Much of the film was shot on small, hand-held, non-professional cameras. This creates an agreeably grungy mixed-media aesthetic of grainy visuals and lens flare, fuzzy focus and jumpy edits, freewheeling angles and even a few playfully upside-down shots.
Drawing on the collective spirit of the oral folk song tradition, Begic assembled A Ballad in a communal way, re-shaping the script after early rehearsals with her main cast, and working mainly with non-actors in the smaller roles. Many of the music and poetry interludes that appear in the film’s audition scenes were real audition pieces by aspiring cast members. More of this rule-bending, format-busting boldness would have been welcome, particularly during the story’s slower early sections.
Reinforcing the film’s critique of traditional ballad tropes, an archly self-aware meta-movie thread runs through A Ballad, lightly applied at first but more pleasingly prominent in its latter half. Begic punctuates her naturalistic central plot with non-linear jump cuts, dreamlike slow-motion interludes, stand-alone bursts of poetry and music, and stylised tableaux of the protagonists framed against pointedly artificial back-screen projection. The narrative is most appealing when it plays these deconstruction games, nodding to Brecht and Godard along the way. The final scene is particularly strong as various key figures break character for a conversation about art, cinema, happy endings and more. A Ballad may drag and wobble in places, but this elegant pay-off shows Begic at her spry, sardonic best.
Director, screenwriter: Aida Begic
Cast: Marija Pikic, Jasna Žalica, Milan Tocinovski, Lana Stanišic, Slaven Vidak, Enes Kozlicic, Davor Golubovic, Amar Custovic, Gaia Tanovic
Producers: Aida Begic, Adis Djapo, Erol Zubcevic
Cinematography: Erol Zubcevic
Editing: Redzinald Simek
Production company: Film House Sarajevo (Bosnia-Herzegovina)
In Bosnian
Venue: Sarajevo Film Festival (Competition)
120 minutes
