Customer Reviews

Montenegro

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Professional reviewers seem to have missed the obvious; Montenegro is an amusing parody of Ingmar Bergman movies. It mixes Bergman's combination of intellectual and vulgar comedy with the usual ambiguities: from beginning to end, one is never sure whether the heroine (Susan Anspach in her best role) is merely a bored housewife or dangerously insane. Similarly, one can't be sure whether the world of Yugoslavian immigrants that she enters is safer or more dangerous than her normal life. The real key is found when it becomes obvious that the psychiatrist (hired by her husband) is more clearly disturbed than any potential patient. If you're tired of Woody Allen takeoffs on Bergman, see Montenegro.

It's too bad Susan Anspach never became an international star. Her performance here is rich and detailed and full of subtlety. Many do not realize that this movie was based on a real life ex-Patriot wife who did poison her european family after being so fed up with her life and her uninvolved husband. There is some raw eroticism here (that was typical of the edgier filmmaking of the time) but it is surely not pornographic. The comedic situations in the film are dark and dry. I first watched it when it was in theatres and went back twice. I've watched it again through the years, and it still holds up. Mid-life crisis or not, I think anyone can relate to wanting to not just live life, but to feel it full force. The soundtrack includes the wonderful "Ballad of Lucy Jordan," by Marianne Faithful.

Mrs. Jordan is a rich house wife. She got all the things that maybe all of us need: a family, a couple of kids, a palatial house by the sea... But the movie shows the emptiness of her life: she is bored, she doesn't like her life. Her husband decides get some holidays on Brazil these Christmas... She decides to go with him but at the airport she falls in with some Yugoslavian immigrants that run a bar called Zanzibar. Attracted by their way of living she enters Zanzibar, she feels very well, she feels something different, she realizes that doesn't need all the things she had... When she phones her family, she finds out that her daughter (a nine years old girl) has taken her place at home: the girl cooks, cleans... Her husband says "it is so peaceful when your mother is not here"... He doesn't love her... And this is the problem: since Mrs. Jordan is unable to understand that, that her family doesn't need her, that all her life was wasted, and although she feels alive in Zanzibar, she forgets that she doesn't belong to the world of the Yugoslavian immigrants: she is out of place. So really she has no way to go. Very sad. Understanding that all your life was a nonsense, understanding that all your life has always been empty I suppose is not easy: so she kills the man who becomes her lover in Zanzibar and then kills all her family including the psychiatrist her husband hired !!!: the movie got some comic moments, but is not a joke in anyway. Makavejev scoffs at family, materialism, capitalism..., he is telling you "forget the money, forget the clothes, just feel the heat of life..." Think of it.
Very good movie.

The movie begins with a family that seems to be duller than Dagwood & Blonde. Everyone seems safe. But Anspach, the lovely wife has a lust and yearning for excitement or at least a change of pace. She meets a neat guy who is part of gypsy clan. Somehow she wanders away from home and gets into a group of gypsies. The man's name is Montenegro. The vagabonds live a carefree life of abandon. Lots of love, lust and some women dancing in the buff for their own joy and group satisfaction. Anspach "tries" to resist Montenegro and their passion sizzles the screen. She adapts to the new life and seems more in it than to be a part of a family with a cockhold (dullard) of a husband. The end puzzled me in a way. Does she return for good or?

I found the movie much more lively and enjoyable than the reviews. At the same time, this is NOT porn. The movie shows contrasting cultures (staid vs gypsy) and Anspach won my heart as well as admiration for her beauty and acting. I note a new version is coming out. The 81 edition is excellent. I am reluctant to part with this VHS. It is worth watching two-four times at intervals and when in different moods. Each time one comes away livelier and also seeing new perspectives.

Dr. Alan Kardoff, Mgmtdr

I really don't like doing the whole, "Not many people will understand this," vein, but this movie really isn't for everybody. I personally got so much from it from my first viewing, and yet I got the strange feeling that no one else in the theatre I was in really quite "got it", so to speak. A lot of them laughed heartily, but they seemed to laugh at the apparent "randomness" of it, but none of it was random at all. This is a very precise and firmly crafted piece of postmodern art.

First of all, the climax is somewhat in the beginning when she says "I hate being in this movie!" and the very beginning is really the last shot. A lot of situations that incited laughter only did so after the punchline had already been given moments beforehand. A lot of this film is circuitous and self-reflexive, and everything breaks down so that any given meaning something may have eventually undermines itself later. The thing that's excellent about it is how precise and organized it is at breaking everything down into structureless structure. The acting is great but unnecessary because the characters just say what they're thinking/feeling/etc. The story is of a bourgeois woman who falls in love with a man from a lower class and lives happily ever after... only not really. Montenegro is a character only he's one of the most incidental and least important. The children are the caretakers. The adults are the adolescents. And so on...

This film gets a lot of laughs from its irony, but mostly it's a very tense film to try to watch, and I would have MUCH preferred watching it in private so that I wouldn't feel the tension mounting in the auditorium as people literally strained to try to make sense of it. So by all means, believe my intentions are good when I say this film is not for everybody.

--PolarisDiB

This is one of those movies that treads the thin line between softcore porn and legitimate comedy/drama. I only say that, because the few times I've watched it was on an adult cable channel. I think it's the latter. While it does have a good deal of sexual content (tastefully done), it's more interesting as a story. It's a wonderful tale of a bored housewife and her journey of discovery. A perfect blend of comedy, drama, farce, pathos, and erotica. In Dutch with English subtitles. (Stay away from the dubbed version.)

It is funny, very erotic, passionate, and riddled with jabs into society's snobbish attitude toward sexual fulfillment...

A very wealthy American woman is married to a dull Swedish businessman... When the husband is about to leave for Brazil, she decides to go along with him, but is held up in customs and misses the plane... Trying to get back home, she is caught up in the life-style of a group of vibrant Yugoslavian immigrants living in Sweden... She falls in love with the peculiar manners of the group and decides to stay for a couple of days, ending up in a romantic affair with one of the workers, singing in a topless bar, and having a lot of fun...

In contrast to Makavejev's other noteworthy films, "WR--Mysteries of the Organism" and "Sweet Movie," "Montenegro" is light and uncomplicated... It's a simple story simply told... The message is the same--sexual repression leads to insanity, but sensual indulgence livens the spirit...

"Montenegro" does not exploit its eroticism; it lets it grow out of the situation, out of the characters... When Susan Anspach is seen taking a shower, it is photographed in a very beautiful, soft manner... When a couple is making love, the camera pans up their reeling bodies only long enough to establish their lovemaking, then moves on...

I went to see this movie on Christmas night of 1981, not knowing what to expect. Few movies can thrill on first viewing the way this one did--I think of "Law of Desire" as one such movie and it is also dark, erotic and as visually stunning as Montenegro. What struck me was the Bergman beginning and the Bunuel/Almodovar end. The movie begins in the sterile (and of course Scandanavian) background of Bergman. Clean, sterile and boring except for Susan Anspach's constant fondling of her luxurious fur coat. Then, with the sudden appearance of a black taxi driver in the white background of Sweden, one is driven to an incredible,almost unbelievable compound of gypsies who live amorally and happily--if not hysterically--in Zanzibar. Here Montenegro appears, who was first seen in the Bergman portion working in a zoo. So now, is this a dream or is it live--and where did the detour begin? Ask yourself that when you think over the film--and you will think it over many times. The dream like sequence is pure Bunuel--or even Almadovar as his wittiest, and complete with some of the most beautiful nudity and sex ever captured on screen. The movie returns to Bergman, somewhere along the way--or does it? Are we still dreaming at the end? Even though the story is based on a true event, this interpretation of the real-life story is the only way to escape such a sad conclusion. This is the flip-side of the film "Star 80" in which Fosse grabbed us by the neck and shoved our faces into the true results of a gruesome murder, which is usually so clean and tidy in other films. In Montenegro, even without knowing the details of the true story, we approach the nightmare and its antecedents and we can only imagine that we too are dreaming until we awaken. This film, like "Law of Desire" is lush to look at, seductive to watch and will be very difficult to remove, if ever, from your memory. Enjoy without guilt.

While Susan Anspach parties with the gypsies, her husband has his party, too. The scene where he prances around their Danish Modern bedroom with his psychiatrist and his psychiatrist's wife, in matching white bathrobes, to the dulcet tones of ABBA, is worth the price of admission alone.

There is so much delightful/bizarre/provocative poignant innuendo in this movie. I saw it for the first time 30 years ago. Of all the movies I have seen this one stands out. It intertwines the human element with comedy. You really must pay attention or you will miss the subtleties. A must see, think, reflect and laugh!