Honeymoons (Goran Paskaljevic, 2009): Serbia / Albania

Reviewed by Mathew Roscoe, at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

Before this movie played in the theater, a representative pointed out to the audience that this was the first film collaboration between Albania and Serbia. While the significance of that statement may not be clear to most Americans, apparently the two countries have been going at it for quite some time now, and for the two nations to come together behind a film that deals with the racism and hatred going on between them, some kind of miraculous feat has been made. And so, we are given Honeymoons, the product of union between bitter enemies. However, similar to how Mike Myers’s profound spiritual journey led to the abomination that was The Love Guru, it turns out that inspired, emotional backing does not always successfully translate on to the screen. The goal of this movie was noble: Tell the story of innocent victims of the hatred and racism between two countries, and hopefully help the countries realize how wrong and pointless their rivalry is. By all means, such a concept could have generated a masterpiece, but what director Goran Paskaljevic seemed to not realize was that a strong message and goal is only delivered and reached if the movie itself is a strong, moving, enthralling, convincing, and well-executed work of art. What we got instead was a hollow, incomplete misfire that bored or dissatisfied the audience to the point of anger. While calling it terrible may be a bit harsh, it was an incredible idea that became a missed opportunity through some serious, fundamental flaws.

The story this film attempted to convey was that of two engaged or newlywed couples, one from Serbia and one from Albania, who attempt to escape their home country to pursue their dreams together. However, as chaotic family dynamics and the mistrust and animosity between the countries get in their way, they are soon forced to watch helplessly as their dream becomes a never-ending nightmare.

The film’s biggest problem is revealed right off the bat as the first few scenes kick off the movie. One of the first scenes is one of the families coming to the city for the wedding of an extended family member. The family consisted of four members: an elderly man, an elderly woman, and two young adults. It was safe to assume that the two elders were a father and a wife, on the grounds that in this circumstance there was really nothing else they could be. As for the two younger people, no one in the audience had any idea. Not until about halfway through the movie when a character mentions their relationship do we have any idea of the connection between the young man and the young woman. Since they are all together, we can assume they are all a family. But we had no idea whether the young man and the young woman were siblings, cousins, or a couple. We didn’t even know the relationship between the young duo and the eldery duo. Was the man the child of the elderly couple, or was the woman? Were they both? We absolutely could not tell. See what’s wrong with this picture?

If you ever look at a family in real life, you should have no trouble identifying the grandparents, the parents, the uncles, and at the very least, the siblings as opposed to the couples. Why is this identification so natural? When you have a specific familial relationship with someone, blood or romantically, a specific range of chemistries will result between you two. While the chemistry comes in many different flavors and in healthy and unhealthy forms, a human being should be able to know a father-son relationship when he sees one. The same applies even more so to a brother-sister relationship as opposed to a boyfriend-girlfriend or husband-wife relationship. The fact that we could not tell with this film’s characters is not clever subtlety, it is a catastrophic lack of chemistry between the actors that both makes the family plot incredibly confusing and destroys the film’s ability to grip the audience. And this lack of chemistry goes beyond the wedding trip. It’s there throughout the whole movie. And in a movie that’s all about romantic relationships being marred by unhealthy relationships between nationalities, the script and actor’s failure to create a decently convincing relationship more or less breaks the entire movie. It’s because of the lack of chemistry that we felt absolutely nothing when the couple kisses for the first time. It’s because of this flaw that we cannot empathize with the young woman’s struggle to go against her father’s wishes to marry the man she apparently loves. While some of the events that occur are indeed effective and show the mindless terror of hatred between nationalities, the relationships they affect, which was supposed to be the soul of the entire movie, mean absolutely nothing because the actors did not have any kind of relationship.

As much as I don’t want to say it, that’s not the only movie-breaking flaw. The other, massive issue that literally had the audience groaning out load was the complete absence of any kind of ending or conclusion. While the act of ending a movie abruptly or before it feels ‘over’ has been rather common amongst the movies of this festival, this film does it to such an extreme degree that the audience stormed out of the theater in fury. There is a fine line between ‘leaving the rest up to your imagination’ and just failing to create a complete movie. When it fades to black, there wasn’t a single loose end that was tied, which is especially bad when some loose ends were freshly introduced shortly before the credits began rolling. Not even the cliffhanger endings of the second entries of franchise trilogies dared to stoop to the level this film sunk to. It honestly feels like the filmmaker just never got around to

……………..

Were you not annoyed at how I just stopped before I was done with my point? Did you not have a curiosity of what was coming next? Is that curiosity not biting at you? Isn’t it frustrating to have someone catch your attention, make you spend a good deal of your time letting them take you on a journey, only to just stop partway through and never take you to the end? It’s like going on a rollercoaster ride that stops and makes you get off before you ever got to go down the big drop. Removing the whole part of the climax, pay-off and resolution just negates and invalidates everything leading up to it. It made me feel like I wasted an hour and a half watching a story that was only partially told.

This festival has been an incredible experience with some of the most inspiring films I have seen in years, but this movie missed its mark to the point where I just regret having ever seen it.