Since Europe has become the new promised land, its international border crossings have become as mythic as New York's Ellis Island. Such is the nature of the immi-grant honeymoon, as older generations of Europeans will readily tell you of their one-time descent upon the Big Apple. Now the European Union, riding a currency high, is doing the same thing to new groups: Arabs, Turks, Africans, South Asians, Chinese, Filipinos, Latin Americans; and, of course, there are the Western Balkan countries, still in line to join the Union, but not quite there yet.
Honeymoons tells the tale of two couples, one from Serbia and the other from Albania, who are forced to watch their dreams dis-integrate into nightmares.
Newlyweds Vera (Jelena Trkulja) and Marko (Nebojsa Milovanovic) are banking on his musical talent for future prosperity. Barely salvaging his precious hands from a small-town brawl, Marko gathers up his new bride and heads for Hungary. In neighbouring Albania, Maylinda (Mirela Naska) and Nik (Jozef Shiroka) leave their isolated village for Italy. Maylinda, once betrothed to Nik's brother, instinctively shrinks from adventure but Nik forges full steam ahead. Severing bonds with their overbearing families and the past, these two couples stand on the brink of happiness. However, when they are mistakenly detained by authorities at the German and Italian borders, respectively, the newlyweds' hopes seem to shatter.
Veteran director Goran Paskaljevic, who fled Serbia for France during the rule of late president Slobodan Miloševic, is not just interested in knocking on heaven's door. He wants to reach those pearly gates hand in hand with his neighbour – hence the first Albanian-Serbian co-production in cinema history. Despite undiminished tensions over breakaway Kosovo, Honeymoons beautifully reconciles the two nations by pointing out their similarities rather than their differences. Though Paskaljevic insists he wasn't trying to make any political point with this work, before he even started filming, Serbian nationalists had already accused him of being a traitor, while Albanians in Tirana and Kosovo didn't exactly warm to the idea. If a simple love story has such powerful repercussions, imagine what would happen if this film was really about politics! Then again, maybe it is.
Dimitri Eipides
Goran Paskaljevic was born in Belgrade and studied at the Film and Television School of the Acad emy of Performing Arts in Prague. He has directed more than thirty documentaries and fifteen fiction features. His features include
Beach Guard in Winter (76),
Special Treatment (80),
Guardian Angel (87),
Tango Argentino (92),
Someone Else's America (95),
Cabaret Balkan (98),
How Harry Became a Tree (01),
Midwinter Night's Dream (04),
The Optimists (06) and
Honeymoons (09).