As far as I know it is still only a minority who derive pleasure (physical feeling, certainly) from having blades taken to genitalia but then we only hear about the reported cases. De Sade'sĪndré's 'ten years from now,' is now eighteen years ago. It may very well be that ten years from now people will pay ten thousand dollars in cash to be castrated, just in order to be affected by something!'Īndré Gregory in the sublime My Dinner With André (1982) 'I mean, things don't affect people the way they used to. My own reading focuses more on the thematic underbelly, as despite the film's effectiveness as a pitch-black horror drama (and the arguments over that will doubtless continue to rage), for me it only makes real sense when viewed in allegorical terms.Ī muse on the many penetrations of A Serbian Film by Camus Camus wrote his at the end of December and described it to me as a reaction rather than a review, but it's a thoughtful and well argued one, particularly given the extremity of response in some more widely read quarters. The two pieces appear in the order in which they were written. It's important to establish up front that they were written independently and neither is intended as a reaction to the other, and where there are alternative opinions on specific elements then this is purely coincidental, not a reaction by one reviewer to the views of the other. In an unusual but not unique move, we've elected to review the film from two perspectives, an approach that was not the result of forward planning but two very different responses to the same film. Reactions to the film have differed widely and will doubtless continue to do so, but such is the nature of extreme cinema. But in the case of A Serbian Film, a viscerally shocking, morally punishing film born from Spasojevic's anger at the exploitative nature of modern society and the darker aspects of his own country's recent history, both views are valid and deserve to be made and heard. Those who react negatively to the extremity of its content run the risk of being labelled overly sensitive and of missing the subtextual point, while an allegorical reading exposes the writer to charges of pretentious gullibility. Srdjan Spasojevic's A Serbian Film, without question the most controversial and divisive film of 2010, is not an easy one to write about in an even-handed or balanced manner. Front page disc reviews film reviews articles interviews

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