The political subtleties around the last days of Yugoslavia will be most appreciated by local audiences. Shot principally in Herzegovina - location of the miracle site of Medjugorje - the unnamed town appears to be partly Catholic, partly Muslim, though the possible religious difference between Martin and Azra never is developed. It’s no surprise to find she has a VIP suitor knocking at her door, a local army officer who has helped raise Martin these 20 years that his father has been away. Her neat little headscarf identifies her as a woman of the people, and she’s scrappy, stubborn and beautiful, too. The cast is strong, including newcomers Ler and Stupljanin, but none brightens the screen like Furlan in her Mother Courage role as Divko’s abandoned ex-wife. Although the irony of “No Man’s Land” easily crossed borders, not all of “Cirkus Columbia” succeeds in doing the same. One suspects there’s a lot of humor lost in the translation. The script by Tanovic and Ivica Dikic is simple to a fault, becoming utterly predictable in the forbidden romance between Martin and his father’s bride-to-be. In the background, the war machine rumbles and prepares to strike, and we know all too well that even this lovely town in Herzegovina is going to be dragged to hell. Manojlovic is a masterful comedian and a king of understatement here, he spends most of the film mistreating poor Azra and looking for his missing cat Bonn - or rather, he enlists Martin and Azra, and eventually the entire town, to search for his runaway pet. The only problem is that it is occupied by his wife, Lucija, and his son, Martin, but he heartlessly kicks them out with the connivance of the local mayor and moves in.
Having enriched himself in Germany, he has waited for the communists to depart and is now ready to spend the rest of his days living in peace in his family home. The action begins when the middle-aged Divko (Miki Manojlovic) proudly drives into town in his big Mercedes, with the flame-haired pinup Azra (Jelena Stupljanin) on his arm.
These two sides of the film are embodied in young Martin (Boris Ler), a ham-radio enthusiast, and his single mom, Lucija (Mira Furlan), whose tragic face reflects the atmosphere of foreboding and the chaos to come. As genre, it harks back to the Eastern European sweet little village films, playing on that nostalgic ideal of summer swims in the river and first sexual encounters while leading up to the ugly war about to break out in former Yugoslavia.
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