It never became clear to me what is the main topic of the film! There was a number of divergent themes that seemed to fight for the director's attention. Alas, none of them were developed successfully.
As one example: Diulgerov tried to present one indeed very pressing problem of modern Bulgarian society - the pseudo-nationalism that is gripping a significant part of the nation. However, he did not -discuss- the problem, did not offer criticism or even a solution. He presented it in the most naturalist and banal way - by having all the characters of his film talk as chauvinists. At that, their behaviour was exaggerated and felt quite artificial. I would think Mr. Djulgerov wasn't sure that otherwise the audience would get it. Since the chauvinist line comes in without a logical introduction or preparatory context, one feels it is pointless and simply brutal.
Lack of context and introduction, naturalist stereotyping, artificiality (include lots of bad acting here) plague all the other topics in the film. Additionally, I was irritated by the rather forced peppering with "Balkanic exotics", sometimes making it look like a bad copy of Kusturica's style.
As one example: Diulgerov tried to present one indeed very pressing problem of modern Bulgarian society - the pseudo-nationalism that is gripping a significant part of the nation. However, he did not -discuss- the problem, did not offer criticism or even a solution. He presented it in the most naturalist and banal way - by having all the characters of his film talk as chauvinists. At that, their behaviour was exaggerated and felt quite artificial. I would think Mr. Djulgerov wasn't sure that otherwise the audience would get it. Since the chauvinist line comes in without a logical introduction or preparatory context, one feels it is pointless and simply brutal.
Lack of context and introduction, naturalist stereotyping, artificiality (include lots of bad acting here) plague all the other topics in the film. Additionally, I was irritated by the rather forced peppering with "Balkanic exotics", sometimes making it look like a bad copy of Kusturica's style.