BLACK CAT, WHITE CAT
Emir Kusturica | 1998 | Fmr. Yugoslavia/France/Germany | 2h07m | Presented in the original Romani and Serbian audio with English subtitles
BLACK CAT, WHITE CAT is one of Emir Kusturica’s most joyful films, a chaotic romantic comedy full of gangsters, weddings, brass bands, family feuds and people making terrible decisions at tremendous volume.
Set along the Danube, the film follows a small-time hustler whose latest scheme goes badly wrong and leaves his family indebted to a local gangster. The attempted solution is an arranged marriage, but Kusturica quickly lets the plot explode in every direction. Lovers run away. Relatives interfere. Money changes hands. Goats, pigs and cats keep appearing at the edges of the action, adding to the film’s sense of barely contained chaos.
What makes the film so enjoyable is the sheer energy of its world. Kusturica fills the frame with music, movement and visual jokes, but the film never feels like a sequence of disconnected gags. Underneath the noise is a story about families trying to impose order on younger people who have absolutely no intention of cooperating.
Music is central to the experience. Brass bands, folk songs and Romani rhythms push the film forward and make entire scenes feel closer to a party than a conventional comedy. Kusturica had already used music heavily in films like TIME OF THE GYPSIES and UNDERGROUND, but here he gives it even more room. The soundtrack is inseparable from the film’s humour and sense of momentum.
There is also something very generous about BLACK CAT, WHITE CAT. Almost everyone is ridiculous, but Kusturica never treats them with contempt. Even the gangsters, cheats and hopeless romantics are given enough warmth to remain human. The film laughs at greed, pride and family interference, but it also understands why these people keep choosing each other despite everything.
IMO this is the easiest Kusturica film to recommend to someone who's never seen his work, and my go-to when recommending Balkan cinema. It’s funny, musical, excessive and completely alive. More than anything, it feels like a film made for a room full of people rather than a solitary watch at home.
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LOCATION: FOMO Secret Cinema, Bazari Orbeliani, Tbilisi. A five minute walk from Liberty Square metro.
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FOMO Secret Cinema • Bazari Orbeliani, 0105 Tbilisi, Georgia
