by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: $14.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Jelena Djokic, Sergey Trifunovic, Milutin Karadzic, Milica Stefanovic, Milos Lolic, Milos Timotijevic
Intro:
… a furious, snarky, misanthropic and visually inventive nightmare ride.
Your enjoyment of Karmadonna is going to depend very much on how you react to the information that it’s from one of the writers of A Serbian Film (2010). Said knowledge will either fill you with a dark, giddy thrill or a sickening sense of clammy dread, because watching that flick very much felt like someone dropping a steaming grogan into your soul. While Karmadonna isn’t anywhere near as extreme as that controversial, scarring offering, it does share a certain fatalistic sensibility which won’t exactly enamour itself to mainstream audiences. For those looking for something a bit bent, however, this might be an altogether different story.
Karmadonna is the story of an older pregnant woman, Jelena (Jelena Djokic), who has decided to be a single mother because “men ruin everything.” Point of fact, Jelena isn’t super fond of women either, she’s something of a misanthrope. One sunny day, Jelena enjoys soaking up some rays in the park while contemplating the impending birth of her nipper. She receives a call from an unknown number and a Voice (Sergey Trifunovic) claims to be a deity who requires her assistance in dispensing karmic justice to those who richly deserve it. If she refuses? This “creator of content” will cause her unbelievable pain and make Jelena lose her baby. Just how far will she go to save her ruggie-to-be? And just what the hell is this Voice’s endgame?
The experience of watching Karmadonna is less a traditional movie and more a grimy sprint through a nightmarish Serbian city while suffering a bad gin hangover or amphetamine psychosis. Every character is the worst, most darkly heightened version of who they could be and there’s precious little compassion for, or from, any of the characters. Writer/director Aleksandar Radivojevic has little interest in delivering a story with moments of hope here and instead shoves the viewer through a stylishly grotesque, unrelenting blender of depravity. It’s certainly compelling stuff, with Djokic the closest thing we have to a sympathetic lead and Trifunovic often quite funny as a rogue god who is fed up with humanity’s selfish, defeatist bullshit.
Karmadonna would have been a fantastic 85-90-minute movie, tight and disciplined. Unfortunately, it comes in just under two hours and would have really benefited from judicious editing. Over a long enough timeline, even the wryest and most knowing script can eventually start to feel like mall goth nihilism and empty edgelord posturing. The “everything sucks” spirit will appeal to narky alcoholics and the terminally online, but everyone else may find their eyes beginning to roll just a tad by the time the third act rolls around.
Ultimately, Karmadonna is a furious, snarky, misanthropic and visually inventive nightmare ride. Bleak and blackly amusing, it’s exactly the kind of film you want to see with a group of likeminded deviants at a horror film festival and is thankfully much lighter than A Serbian Film. And while it’s not exactly cinematic nirvana, it certainly won’t make you feel like Nakara on earth either.
