After the First World War, Serbia lost two thirds of its male population. The shortage of men is especially drastic in a small rural village where sisters Little Boginja (Katarina Radivojevic) and Ognjenka (Sonja Kolacaric) find themselves in a desperate situation. Not only were the last two men crushed by tombstones in a drunken accident, but the all-female population have to harvest their precious grapes from a vineyard littered with land-mines. Each day the women draw lots to see who will give it a go, as one hapless maid after another is blown sky high. The last virile man left in the village is bedridden old Grandpa Bisa, whom the other women decide should rid the young sisters of their bothersome virginity. Unfortunately, Ognjenka’s nervous screams send the old coot to his grave. She and her sister are soon tied to a burning stake, but quick-thinking Boginja promises to bring men back to the village in return for their lives. Local witch Zamna (Radmila Tomovic) gives them just three days and sends the ghost of their vengeful grandmother - in the form of a flock of bats - to ensure the girls keep their promise.
Not too many films focus on female sexual frustration, especially on so grand a scale. This mad Serbian flight of fancy, which was briefly the country’s most expensive production ever (it has since been surpassed), drew critical comparisons with effects-laden French fantasies like Amelie (2001), most likely on account of its fairytale plot, quirky black humour and wildly whimsical visual style. Sort of like Jean Cocteau on acid, newcomer Uros Stojanovic practices a bombastic, green-screen heavy, CGI laden style of hyper-surrealism more commonly seen the action-adventure films of Zack Snyder or the Pang Brothers. It is quite interesting to see such hyperbolic visuals placed in a quirkier context, though oddly for such an image-driven film the overriding metaphor is not visual but aural, whether in the wailing ritual the sisters perform daily or the mournful musical numbers. The stunning visuals unfurl like a moving tapestry given dimension rife with symbolism unlikely to be deciphered by non-Serbs.
Boginja and Ognjenka’s journey begins as they attempt to club a lone fat man unconscious, but are chased away by another group of gun-toting women determined to safeguard their precious male. The girls then ambush a stray soldier who turns out to be a woman in disguise. “Men should stay at home while women fight wars”, she laments. Eventually, the sisters follow the hordes of screaming, sex-starved women that flock to the travelling roadshow run by muscular human cannonball Dragoljub (Nenad Jezdic) and drunken crooner Arsenje (Stefan Kapicic). Thereafter the girls are torn between keeping these studly specimens for themselves or handing them over to their ravenous friends. Stojanovic parallels masculinity with fertility via occasionally poignant episodes as when the ghosts of dead soldiers emerge from a mirror to dance with the mourning women, although Ognjenka complains even ghosts won’t touch her.
Co-written by Aleksandar Radivojevic, who penned the altogether less-than-cuddly A Serbian Film (2010), Tears for Sale is unlike Amelie in that it is driven by the loins not the heart. Although the male characters remain hapless, preening goons with the women in control it remains hard to discern a clear feminist agenda given the film assumes the women are incapable of devising a plan to harvest the grapes themselves. Leaving no room for sisterhood, when it comes to grabbing a man it remains every girl for herself, which delights the preening Dragoljub much to the dismay of the smitten Ognjenka. The tone of the film is lusty and rowdy like a gypsy folk tale, as when Boginja steals a hearse and kicks a corpse onto the road so she and Arsenje can copulate in the coffin, but this devil-may-care attitude leaves it lacking in sympathetic characters. Once our heroines grab their men, the film meanders from one shrill, self-satisfied slapstick episode after another before the finale takes a jarring left-turn into picturesque tragedy, for no clear reason other than because it can. Fans of glamorous Serbian actresses will find plenty to admire but, whether by accident or design, the film presents female sexuality as something freaky and farcical.
