22/09/2005

The public was enthusiastic last night, after the world premiere of Gravehopping, by Jan Cvitkovič, at the San Sebastian International Film Festival, where this co-production involving Slovenia and Croatia is in competition. Cvitkovič's second feature (three years after Bread and milk) is an ironic yet human view on life and death enhanced by fantastic photography (thanks to DoP Simon Tansek.)

The film starts with an allusion to kitsch (the instrumental version of the hit "I Will Survive") but this music is out of context (as if anticipating the 70's disco club-scene): it is played at a funeral, the first of a long series throughout the movie. Pero, omnipresent in these scenes, is a professional eulogist; he receives money for praising people he never met. Sometimes his speeches echo his own life, but nobody notices. The script actually focuses on him, his family and friends —his father's repeated attempts to commit suicide, his masochistic girlfriend, his best friend who worships him, and his sister's tragedy.

The dialogues remain simple enough not to reveal what is going on in the characters' minds. Here, actions express the inner thoughts better than words. In fact, the first half of the film is somewhere between a light-hearted comedy and a sarcastic one (irony being a defence against the fear of death) and suddenly, halfway through the movie, everything becomes unbearably violent and leaves the spectator lost and very puzzled by the main character.

Gravehopping, clearly one of the most interesting movies in competition, will be released in Slovenia in October. This film, produced by the director and Janez Burger for Staragara, in co-production with Propeler Film Zagreb and RTV Slovenija, was financed by the Slovenian Film Fund and the Croatian Ministry of Culture. International sales are handled by Taskovski Films.