Promise Me This

Kusturica rides on the rails that he had already laid out in his previous films, such as Black Cat, White Cat, or Hungry Heart, meaning it is a highly stylized Balkan slapstick, underpinned with emotional musical rhythms and filled with a bunch of eccentric characters, who are not really from our world but are highly entertaining. Indeed, Promise Me This doesn't reach the quality of the cult film Black Cat, White Cat, as its screenplay starts off a bit slow, and especially with such a large number of characters, scenes, and motifs, some may seem too outrageous, unsympathetic or dysfunctional. Similarly, these motifs are no longer original from Kusturica, but if we were to criticize Woody Allen for his plethora of neurotic intellectuals, then his filmography would greatly thin out and compared to Woody, Kusturica still holds back a lot in terms of the quantity of his productions. On the other hand, the film is still highly entertaining for me, and unlike a lot of pretentious pseudo-intellectual boredom that characterizes a substantial part of festival films, this one is functional. Moreover, I don't know how Kusturica does it, but his completely improbable love constellations between very incompatible partners really affect me. I don't know where he finds these likable women, but just like Hungry Heart, I was rooting for Tsane the whole time, hoping his romance would work out. Overall impression: 90%. (03/05/2011)

I always look forward to films from the Balkans. There's something about their music that hits you with its energy, and the humor just keeps rolling in, unstoppable. Sure, after watching it, you might get the impression that life over there is strange and tough, but honestly, that's not the case. (09/05/2011)