By Marsida Gjoncaj
So it happened that I and my friends decided to watch Honeymoons, the much spoken first Serbian- Albanian coproduction of Goran Paskaljevic (which many foreigners find so amazing since they do not think of Albania and Kosovo as two different entities). The subject was promising; a Serbian and an Albanian couple: one decides to go to Italy with the hope of a better life. But at the border they deal with the usual sort of problems people from the Balkans deal with when traveling to the West.
Bearing this in mind we thought it would be a good idea to take our Swedish friend, Johan, to the theater and watch the movie. What a disappointment when we learned that there were no subtitles in English, a very strange thing for a movie competing and even receiving awards in different international film competitions. So I spent half of it translating and explaining for Johan (and I do hate talking during the movies).
So far, so good. The first shock came when the family from Kukёs got on the bus which had Puka number plates to travel to Tirana. As this wasn’t strange enough, on the bus one could hear folk music from the south of Albania (what was the Albanian co- play writer thinking?!). Furthermore, the bus from Kukёs (Albanian northern town) enters Tirana from Rruga Elbasanit (a town in the center of Albania). Again, what were the writers thinking? But still, one could let go of these inaccurate details if it wasn’t for the man bribing the bus driver in order to stop in the center of Tirana. So, maybe Albania is a corrupt country but this is going much too far. Try traveling with a bus through our country and you’ll see the bus driver will pull over wherever you tell him to.
The movie follows with the description of a somewhat post-communist, nouveau-riche, Albanian wedding, with the bride wearing a red wedding gown. But the most impressive thing to see was the big speared pork served during the wedding dinner. Whether an Albanian or not, if you’ve been even to a single Albanian wedding, you know that such thing does not happen. They serve lamb, veal or even chicken but surely not pork at a wedding dinner in Albania.
While the performance of the Albanian couple was weak, the Serbian one was a bit better.
On the other side of the border, in Serbia, there is a wedding going on as well. Taking place in a badly furnished front yard of an old house in a small Serbian village, the wedding scene features people biting meat directly from a knife the host holds in his left hand. In his right he is holding a pistol. But so are all the persons invited at the wedding, who are also shooting in the air while dancing. Now, I do not know much of Serbian weddings but it’s a sure bet the director has been exaggerating way beyond the artistic limits.
So, it happened that this big fuss about the first Serbian- Albanian coproduction was totally in vain. Too bad, because the plot was very promising.
