To Serbia’s credit, they ousted Slobodan
Milosevic on their own, unprompted. However, there is still a general
defensiveness whenever people ask questions about the 1990s. This is
particularly true in the case of Milena’s husband Vlada. She is about to
discover why, but it is not clear she can handle the truth in Serbian actress
Mirjana Karanovic’s directorial debut, A
Good Wife, which
screens during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.
Vlada is a prosperous contractor, so
obviously he has no scruples whatsoever. Nevertheless, Milena was able to maintain
a willful blindness, despite Vlada’s sneering curses at the war crimes
investigators on the evening news. One day she comes across an old VHS tape
while cleaning and watches just enough to see too much. She tries to ignore her
new reality, but when the drunkard Dejan, Vlada’s junior paramilitary colleague,
starts making veiled threats of blackmail, it is impossible for Milena to live
in denial.
Milena also has her own issues, like her
recently discovered tumor. The parallels between Milena’s breast cancer and
Serbia’s cancerous history are impossible to miss, but Karanovic shows a good
sense of restraint, resisting the urge to drive the point home with a
pile-driver. If you can’t get it from her matter of fact approach, you never
will, but the film never feelsl lectury or contrived.
A Good Wife is
really a slow burn that gives the others issues in Milena’s life nearly equal
weight as her struggles with Vlada’s war crimes (though they arguably all
interrelated). If you are lucky, you will recognize Karanovic from Darko Lungulov’s
wonderfully wise and world weary romantic comedy Here and There. Yet, in many ways A Good Wife is the antithesis to that film, which clearly implies
everyday Serbs deserve a return to normalcy and a break from the international
guilt trips. Not so fast say Karanovic and co-screenwriters Lungulov and Stevan
Filipovic, arguing if Serbia does not face up to its not-so-distant past, it
will continue to fester and metastasize.
Karanovic also set herself up with the
sort of role that is a perfect awards vehicle, which she duly knocks out of the
park. Karanovic and company do not merely present a simplistic conflict between
doing the right thing and protecting a comfortable life. We also see all the
small, possibly more pernicious little compromises she makes just to get
through the day.