Slovenian Girl (Damjan Kozole, 2009): Slovenia

Reviewed by Mathew Roscoe. Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, at the Metro IV Theater.

Dark or taboo subject matter seem to be incredibly popular with most independent subject matter nowadays. Some control this tendency and do it in a chilling or compelling way, whilst others seem to do it just for pretentious exploitation. And then there are those rare occasions when a taboo subject doesn’t seem to be exploited enough. In the flawed yet enticing film, Slovenian girl, the director Damjan Kozole gives us a bit of a mix of all of these traits, resulting in a product that will likely give a mixed but overall positive reaction to its audience.

The film begins with Alexandra, a student from the small town of Ljubljana who is secretly working as a prostitute to help make ends meet whilst going to college in the city. Her work as a prostitute makes her notorious in the underground world and she soon becomes known as “The Slovenian Girl”. However, just as things start to get better, disaster strikes as one of her clients, a powerful Member of Parliament, dies of a heart attack. It gets out to the press that this public official was with the “Slovenian Girl” before he died, and Alexandra desperately tries to avoid being discovered whilst her code name is everywhere on the news. Soon she gets trapped in a hectic downward spiral of lies as she juggles getting by in college, avoiding discovery by the press, trying to keep her secret from her father, and staying in the prostitution business whilst escaping some violent pimps who are trying to gain control of her.

This is the kind of film that almost entirely relies on the quality of the script and the actors’ performances, and thankfully that is this film’s strongest point. The screenplay by Damjan Kozole and Matevz Luzar is generally well-crafted with a consistently interesting and surprising plot, even if it tends to wander around without a clear direction. The cast is even better, with convincing and moving performances throughout the entire ensemble. Nina Ivanisin is very impressive as the lead, creating a deep, well-rounded character that, in spite of her serious flaws and nearly self-destructive nature, always remains a sympathetic, if not likeable, human being that we can always relate to. Also worth noting is Peter Musevski as Edo, Alexandra’s father. He both adds to the film’s emotional complexity through his suicidal nature and gives the film some much-needed comic relief through the subplot of his attempt to revive his old college band, “Electroshock”. Watching a bunch of overweight, middle-aged men trying to relive their heyday of the 70s is an absolute delight.

That being said, the film does suffer from some odd choices or inconsistencies. One choice that may have confused the audience was the way they decided to handle the prostitution scenes. Being a slightly taboo subject, the way a movie about prostitution deals with scenes in which the prostitute is ‘at work’ requires a very delicate balance. This film didn’t seem to have much of a balance. Early in the movie, it quickly cuts to an extremely explicit, almost pornographic sex scene, one that caught most of the audience off guard. But then, during the many other ‘work’ scenes throughout the rest of the movie, such explicit content is completely avoided to the point where it almost seems like a different movie. While I understand that the director probably felt that the initial scene gave the audience the right idea, and therefore did not need to touch that material again, it seems odd that a movie would venture so far into the deep only to rush back to the shallow end and stay there for the rest of the movie.

The other choice that may be seen as questionable was the choice to end the movie before it really ‘ended’. When the movie faded to black, there were so many loose ends and unresolved problems and lingering worries that it left the audience almost completely hanging. In fact, upon my viewing, I thought this final scene was just a turning point or epiphany that was going to lead to a climax and a resolution, making it all the more off-putting to see the movie cut to the credits.

That being said, warts and all, this film is an enticing portrait of those to get themselves into undesirable situations from the choices they made in hopes of getting by in life.