26/05/2007

Cross the hills to go to the village sell his cow, buy a religious icon and find a wife: Tsane makes these three promises to his grandfather, who believes he is dying. It is not the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen or Charles Perrault. It is Emir Kusturica.

Having entered the exclusive club of multiple Palme d'Or winners at Cannes (for When Father Was Away on Business in 1985 and Underground in 1995), the Balkan bard returns to competition with his eighth feature film Promise Me This [+see also:
trailer
film profile], a colourful and entertaining fairy tale produced by the director’s company Rasta Films (which put in €8.11m) and at 40% by France’s Olivier Delboscq and Marc Missonnier of Fidélité, involved for the first in an international title (and in co-production with France 2 Cinéma and StudioCanal, which is handling sales).

In the style of Black Cat, White Cat (1998), the peculiarity of Promise Me This, announced as a "a comedy with a light and necessarily mad heart", lies in its star, Uros Milovanovic, who is decidedly too young to find a wife. He is flanked by the 57 year-old Miki Manojlovic (who has starred in many of the Kusturica’s films, including Underground and When Father… ), Aleksandar Bercek (Life is a Miracle, 2004) and the beautiful Marija Petronijevic as Jasna.

The Bosnian director, a native of Sarajevo, built the film’s village from zero, in the mountains southeast of Belgrade, including a church, hotel, restaurants and a film school, inaugurated no less by Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica in 2004.

(Translated from Italian)