Clip (Maja Milos, 2012): Serbia

Reviewed by Jeffrey Englert. Viewed at AFI Fest 2012, Nov. 3rd, 2012.

Throughout the outrageously visual film, Clip, the audience was thrown right into the life of a young teen, Jasna, who confronts her self-confidence and family problems, with sex and male-abuse. The film starts out with a “sh**, did that just happen fashion,” and continues the whole way through, while we quickly see Jasna throwing herself at a boy, only to be turned down and humiliated, time and time again. After this, the audience spectates on how the young-adult records herself on her cell phone, only to show her highlights to her friends and mock pop-stars. This is often shown throughout the film, which helps to illuminate her self-confidence problems by showing the audience how she wishes to be someone else.

The setting of this film took place in Serbia, Russia, which was beautifully portrayed with the art direction and locations of this film. Another aspect that was dug deep within the character of Jasna, was her relationship with her parents. Throughout the film we see how mean and brutal she is to her family, which includes her deathly-sick father. Near the end, we find out that her anger towards her family was a mere reflection towards her mom for already “writing” her father off as being dead, and a failure to cope with the illness.

While this film, as a whole was mediocre, there were a couple of things that I must emphasize on. Throughout the film, the audience experiences these intensely graphic scenes that do help to the desperation of Jasna, but only to an extent. Past that extent, I believe for it to be just way too much, and unnecessary. As a matter of fact, there were several times were I was actually taken out of the film, due to those graphic scenes.

Another aspect that wasn’t to my pleasure was the overall message and story that was told at the end. Sure, the audience understands her self-confidence and other problems, however I don’t feel as if there was an overarching message that was carried through to the end; that gave the audience something meaningful to walk away with. Instead, it felt like we experienced a week of Jasna’s life and then that was it.


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