By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Tears For Sale Directed by Uros Stovanovic

Posted Friday, September 5th, 2008 - Comments Off on Tears For Sale Directed by Uros Stovanovic
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Mike Leigh’s advice was well taken, as Uros Stovanovic has the kind of visual muscle to make him one of the next hot candidates for a Hollywood slot. The film is, essentially, a fairy tale filled with dark jokes, estrogen, sex, and explosions. Simplifying the story is probably a mistake, but I will offer the broadest strokes…

All the men in a Serbian town are off to war or dead… the last man of a reasonable age mines the grape field, the town’s only form of self-support, and dies in the process… this leaves the women drawing straws for the inevitably deadly task of gathering the day’s grapes (movie explosions and great visuals ensue)… two sisters, about to become 21 and 22 – spinsters in this period – work as professional wailers, as their mother did… when the women of the town try to get the elder sister to lose her virginity to “Grandpa,” her screams give him a heart attack and he dies… to avoid being burnt at the stake, the pair swears to find a man to bring to the women and their journey ensues.

And that doesn’t even take us to the first act break.

Sex, violence, men being blown out of cannons, women swarming, romantic love, wild hallucinations, lots of spider brandy, acts of kindness, and acts of betrayal all follow… all in a style that reaches beyond Gilliam with a profoundly Eastern European sensibility and a fascinating approach to the idea of the feminine.

Of course, it’s a specialty item, unlike the extraordinary (and also a visual feast) Slumdog Millionaire, which will speak to a much wider audience if Searchlight can find them. But this is a film that every American film fest should be chasing and should certainly get some form of domestic distribution. This is the kind of joyous foreign romp that film lovers should get a chance to see. I’m sure there will be some wrestling over whether it is politically correct… but it is filmicly thrilling… a rich dessert of imagery and ideas and pleasures which reminded me more that once, albeit with very different details, of Tom Jones… but with Angelina Jolie and Gwynnie Paltrow as the sisters.

I don’t want to oversell. It isn’t the reinvention of the wheel. But it’s great movie-movie making. And that is more than enough to get me happy.

– David Poland


Executive Producer: Marko Paljic, Mirjana Tomic Starring: Katarina Radivojevic,
Sonja Kolacaric, Stefan Kapicic, Nenad Jezdic

Producer: Batric Nenezic
Screenplay: Uroš Stojanovic, Aleksandar Radivojevic
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Posted in Festivals, Movie Review, Reviews, Toronto Film Festival | Comments Off on Tears For Sale Directed by Uros Stovanovic

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon