Emotions and cultures collide in Love
On Friday at midnight, the Venice Days presented the American-Serbian co-production Love from director Vladan Nikolic. A collection of intersecting urban tales set in New York that overlap in the story of a Bosnian hit-man, Love is an interesting crossroads of characters, themes and styles of filmmaking from both the old and new worlds.
The Bosnian hit-man goes by the code name of 'Uncle Vanya' and his last job before he gets out is supposed to be simple; exchanging money for drugs in a hotel. The operation goes horribly wrong when another hit-man also arrives at the scene and people are killed. Because of the accident, Vanya meets his ex-wife again who works in the hotel and who is now in a relationship with a police-officer who wants to investigate the case. Much of the story’s cohesive force derives from the suitably enigmatic performance of Sergej Trifunovic as Vanya, who can be at once a tough killer and a man worrying about matters of the heart. Vanya is a complex character; having grown up an orphan in Bosnia, he is religious but does not know whether his parents were Serb, Croat or Muslim.
Similar to recent American films with intersecting stories such as 21 grams and Crash, this narrative sometimes goes in reverse gear to show us how the stories are connected. Nikolic says that the film is “An American film with a European feel,” a typically American story to which he has brought his outsider perspective. “Just like in real life,” the director explains, “you slowly learn new information about people and situations that might change your opinion”. There is however one universal constant in Nikolic’s vision of the world. According to the director, the deceptively simple title of the film is connected to the ultimate motivation for most of the characters’ actions: “all the characters do what they believe to be love”.
Love was produced by Jim Stark and Vladan Nikolic for Studio Belgrade. The film is co-produced by Surla Films, Thoke&Moebius, Why Not Productions and Mikado. The latter will also distribute the film in Italy; international sales are handled by Starksales.
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