Number 179 on the top 1000 films of all time is the Serbian black comedy drama Black Cat, White Cat.
Matko (Bajram Severdzan) is a small-time Romani crook who is down on his luck. He plots to rob a train with the help of hedonistic gangster Dadan (Srdan Todorovic.) But the duplicitous Dadan double-crosses Matko and takes the goods for himself. To help Matko pay off his debts, he convinces him to allow his son to marry Dadan's sister.
Black Cat, White struck me as being Serbia's answer to the classic crime caper a la Snatch or the Sting. We have Matko as the lovable roguish protagonist who must pull a feat of daring do to get him out of a spot of bother. There's Dadan as the over-the-top gangster - a touch too over the top I would argue, there was a lot of gratuitous cocaine use and fooling around with prostitutes, and even a cute love story between Matko's son and the local barmaid. There is plenty of physical comedy especially at the end when Dadan is tricked into falling into the local manure. And also lots of hammy violence like the during the heist sequence when Dadan shoots dead a witness.
Despite all this, I did find the film hard to follow. I'm obviously not from the Balkans so I had to watch the film with English subtitles, meaning I missed anything that didn't translate. But I also don't know enough of the different Balkan cultures so a lot o the cultural references passed me by - the wedding sequence, a vital element of the film was lost on me. But even more bizarrely, there was a very strange scene where a lady squeezed and picked up a nail with her ample derriere. Perhaps if I was of Balkan persuasion I might have understood this.
Although I could see what the film was trying to do, I couldn't follow it at all. It wasn't for me.
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