The very same week, the most beautiful fairy tale has been released on video, Black Cat, White Cat. It is the latest work by Emir Kusturica, Bosnian-born Serbian director, winner of numerous awards of many European festivals. After his previous work, Underground, even though the film represented rather accurate picture of the SFR Yugoslavia and portrayed the feelings of those who believed in it and loved it, he was heavily attacked by so-called French intellectuals. They labelled it as Serbian propaganda, even though the message of the film, among the rest, clearly stated a disgust with the national segregation. Kusturica announced retirement from the world of cinema, from which he fortunately withdrew shortly after.
Black Cat, White Cat, or Crna Macka, Beli Macor in Serbian, distinguishing between the sexes of the two, is a story of a mismatched love, the "Romeo and Juliet" story within the Gypsy society, a subculture that Kusturica explored in Time of the Gypsies.
Matko Destanov (Bajram Severdzan), is a low-level criminal who has a get-rich-fast scheme that requires purchasing the train full of stolen gasoline, but he needs to get it across the Serbian-Bulgarian border, and for that he enlists the help of the local gangsters Dadan, who uses enormous amounts of cocaine and curlers for his hair, to help with the customs (Srdjan Todorovic from Underground) and Grga Pitic (Sabri Sulejmani). Grga is his father's friend, a wonderfully comic character, a gangster with a heart. He looks like he just came from the pages of the Italian dark comic Alan Ford. He has at least some million wrinkles on his face and has no use of his legs. Thus, he drives around in a cart especially designed for him, a cart that you can see every day combined with the race car machine, with thousands of little drawers where he holds the money and his gun and many different gadgets, also equipped with a fan blowing in his face. His vision is failing him, so he carries glasses that are dozens of times thicker than the jar bottoms. He still shoots his gun like John Wayne in a scene similar to many westerns, like Once Upon a Time in the West, and is fascinated with the film, Casablanca. Matko's dad, Babo (head of the House), is a retired gangster, a kind hearted heavy drinker, with the first and foremost care of securing his grandson's future.
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