Is revolution sometimes necessary, and, if so, when? With his first fiction film in over 20 years, Dino Mustafić (Remake, 2003) seems to be calling for one through the satirical story of some nursing home residents rebelling against the staff and the management who mistreat them. The Pavilion opened the 31^st Sarajevo Film Festival.

Set in the aftermath of undisclosed violent events, the film opens with an interrogation of a wheelchair-bound elderly man nicknamed Schumacher (Zijah Sokolović) by a police inspector played by Alban Ukaj in a role not too dissimilar to the one he had in Full Moon [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Nermin Hamzagić
fiche film]. Insisting on telling the truth, rather than helping the investigation, Schumacher reveals the events that led to the tragedy.

The residents of the nursing home nicknamed The Pavilion have been abused by the staff for years – their heating would be turned off in the middle of winter, their pensions and possessions were taken, and they were denied hot water, food and even proper medical care. As the manager (Mirjana Karanović) puts it bluntly, the home constantly needs to cut costs – even basic care costs more than the patients can contribute. Sick and tired of being mistreated, the residents come up with a revolution led by Mojmir (Miralem Zupčević) in the political sense and Angelo (Rade Šerbedžija) in the combat sense.

They take up arms, overthrow the regime and take the staff members hostage. The mayor (Ermin Bravo) must find a solution as quickly as possible, since it is an election year and he has certain business interests in the nursing home. He opts for a peaceful solution while the SWAT team is getting ready to storm the building. Although the residents have most goals in common, which means new management and a dignified life worthy of a human being, the maximalist requests and take-no-prisoners tactics of their leadership pave the way to violence.

Working from a script by famous journalists Viktor Ivančić and Emir Imamović Pirke (based on Ivančić’s novella), Mustafić strives to examine the necessity of revolutionary takeover and change, for better or for worse, as the situation gets untenable. The filmmaker certainly has some interesting ideas, such as subverting the concept of the older generations’ guilt into the new generations abandoning the system of solidarity for selfish, profiteering reasons, but Mustafić somehow gets lost along the way in his attempt to strike a balance between the serious and the comic that at times does not shy away from low blows such as casual racism, gerontophobia and the abundant use of bodily functions for laughs. The use of the communist iconography seems downright naive.

On the technical side, the music by Bojan Zulfikarpašić always feels spot-on, while the camerawork by Almir Đikoli and Mustafa Mustafić is more often shaky, rather than feeling fluid, as intended. The editor Vladimir Gojun manages to save the day, just narrowly, by keeping the running time bearable and the pace high.

However, the trump card of the film should be its ensemble cast of regional thesps. Apart from those mentioned above, we also see Nikša Butijer, Jasna Diklić, Ksenija Pajić, Branka Petrić, Aleksandar Seksan and Meto Jovanovski in his last role. But with such a large number of characters that either function in a collective setting or just as plot devices, they usually do not have enough time or space to shine properly, so they also aim for scoring cheap points with gags and mannerisms. Nevertheless, they remain the strongest selling point of the film, especially in the region, since The Pavilion could hardly travel far.

The Pavilion is a co-production between Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia, staged through Panglas, Cineplanet, Krug Film, Natenane Productions, Monte Royal Pictures and Realstage.