But how do we define the main difference between the films of Michael Haneke ( The Piano Teacher, 2001), Takashi Miike ( Ichi the killer, 2001), Bruno Dumont ( Twentynine Palms, 2007), Catherine Breillat ( Fat Girl, 2001), or Lars von Trier ( Antichrist, 2009 Nymphomaniac I-II, 2013) вЂ“ just to mention some of the most controversial directors of our time вЂ“ and SpasojeviД‡вЂ™s production?ДЇirst of all, in contrast to extreme art cinema, A Serbian Film lacks any kind of authentic aesthetic approach. This is one of the many reasons why A Serbian Film must not be compared with other sexually explicit, extreme films or feel-bad movies that have been proliferating the global arthouse scene. A Serbian Film is thus the fusion of sexploitation, hard-core porn, horror, and melodrama which, because of the eccentric employment of genre-specific tools and the audio-visual and thematic excesses that accompany it, turns the production into a kitschy, garish parody. This self-securing gesture risks the artistic merit of the film for SpasojeviД‡ turns his production into a weird mixture of disgust built on the exploitation of all the shocking codes of other genres. After all, A Serbian Film is driven by the single aim of provoking the viewer and to this end, it knows no thematic or aesthetic bounds. After the sexual abuse of the new-born baby, it is only the rape of MiloЕЎвЂ™s own child that could outstrip the shock tactics of the film вЂ“ and make the spectator want to be re-born in another universe with no eccentric SpasojeviД‡-like people around. Understanding SpasojeviД‡вЂ™s insatiable thirst for shock, these visual hyperboles become rather predictable after a while and because of this, less surprising for the spectator. In case the brave (?) spectator decides to stay, he will have to witness the probably most repulsive scene of A Serbian Film where, before organising a massacre and killing the crew, the heavily drugged MiloЕЎ rapes his already brutally beaten-up wife and unconscious son. In another stomach-turning episode, MiloЕЎ watches a film that features the rape of an infant вЂ“ a point when it is strongly advisable to rush headlong towards the exit of cinema. In one of the scenes for instance, the porn star decapitates his sexual partner, while still having intercourse with the corpse of the beheaded woman. The more the story progresses, the less SpasojeviД‡вЂ™s aims to create a narrative, which eventually turns the film into pure gore-pornography, with MiloЕЎ constantly having an erection, and performing sickening actions that raise the shock value of the film beyond endurance.

Soon the porn star finds himself swept into a non-conventional shooting featuring children, an abused woman, a homosexual guard and rivers of blood and semen. Although the whole project is wrapped in mystery, his desperate financial situation and need to support his six-year-old son Petar (Luka MijatoviД‡) and hot wife Marija (Jelena GavriloviД‡), drives MiloЕЎ into signing the puzzling contract. The pseudo-plot of SpasojeviД‡вЂ™s pseudo-film centers around the retired, middle-aged, alcoholic porn star MiloЕЎ (SrД‘an TodoroviД‡), who gets an unrefusable offer from вЂњartistвЂќ and director Vukmir (Sergej TrifunoviД‡) to make his comeback as a porn star.

Where is the thin blue line that separates sex, nudity and their symbolic quality on screen from pure pornography? What subversive visual representation reaches and goes beyond the social and moral tolerance levels of the audience? And above all, what is the intent of films like A Serbian Film? A Serbian Film features brutal, visceral images and extreme graphic representation, which not only annihilates any kind of visual pleasure and/or identification with the characters, but raises the very concern about the distinction between art on the one hand, and art for artвЂ™s sake on the other. Self-mutation, necrophilia, incest, rape, violence, torture and, above all, hardcore pornography вЂ“ SrД‘an SpasojeviД‡вЂ™s transgressive production merges all the possible taboos and most disgusting topics to shock the well-experienced spectator.

A serbian film rape scenes