Balkanisateur

To judge from recent films from the region, the former Communist states of the Balkans are a Wild East of opportunity for their more stable neighbors. In Lamerica (1994), an Italian entrepreneur undergoes a Dantesque descent when he tries to exploit the locals. And in Sotiris Goritsas's more lighthearted and lightweight but still road-worthy Balkanisateur, a couple of thirtysomething Greek losers come to Bulgaria bearing dollars in a spurious currency-exchange scam. Fotis, a feckless womanizer whose mother is about to be evicted, and Stavros, a disillusioned dreamer whose wife is about to have a baby, need money fast. They failed to capitalize when Eastern Bloc dancers came cheaply, and their struggling nightclub paid the price. They're not going to miss out this time on a hot tip that the Bulgarian lev is going for twice the Sofia street value in Zurich banks.

So they set out in Stavros's antique Peugeot for the border, and what follows is a bracing if mild tour of a Bulgaria and a former Yugoslavia whose ongoing convulsions of change are evidenced by nothing more threatening than a woman in labor at a wedding and a corrupt policeman. The two latter-day Odysseuses are a delight, however, with Stavros's sardonic linguistic and historical asides enlightening to the viewer if not to his traveling companion. Former documentarian Goritsas has a shrewd eye for the gritty and grand detail, setting Balkanisateur in a palpable reality even as it cruises on to its fairy-tale climax.

-- Peter Keough