This was Paskaljevic's first feature and, although it has faults, it is a fine accomplishment in itself. Dragan is an almost unemployable young man, with no qualifications- a repeated theme of the film is the importance of qualifications- dominated by his deranged family and going from one unsuitable temporary job to another, sponsored by friends of his drunken aunt. He meets a girl from an equally dysfunctional family, equally eager to escape her relatives,and they marry, against her family's wishes. The only job Dragan can get, and the only place they can find to live, is looking after a disused beach-café. Eventually his wife returns to her family and Dragan's father dies of a heart-attack, going swimming after eating food he'd brought for his son. At the funeral the father's long-lost friend Dunjic- or someone who claims to be Dunjic- appears and carries Dragan off to a job in the promised land of Sweden. The last shot of the film shows the train running through a dark tunnel with light at the end of the tunnel and the light at the beginning of the tunnel disappearing. To a foreigner the film has flaws- the contrast between the young couple and their monstrous caricatured families is an obvious one; they seem to have come from two different kinds of film, but the interesting thing is the way the fate of Yugoslavia is reflected in the film: the argumentative and domineering elders and the way that the young can only get peace by fleeing the country. It's well-filmed with some beautiful formal moments and some fine shots which show why Paskaljevic has been compared with Tarkovsky and Paradjanov, though he lacks their mysticism. If you can, see it and all of his work.
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