Clip

The hedonistic lifestyle of teens growing up in post-Communist Serbia is examined in graphic detail by writer-director Maja Milos through the figure of Jasna (Isidora Simijonovic), a Belgrade high school student who tries to escape an unhappy home life (with an ill father and exhausted mother) by giving herself over to sex, drinking, and drugs. The voyeuristic camera follows Jasna's self-destructive fling with Djordje (Vukašin Jasnic), a brutal bully who alternates between using her for immediate sexual gratification and beating her when she dares to flirt with someone else. When not servicing his needs, Jasna is hanging out with friends, salivating over new clothes, binge-drinking, and watching lustfully as her thuggish boyfriend offhandedly attacks passersby or engages in random acts of vandalism. Throughout, Jasna and the other girls have their ubiquitous cell phones at the ready, recording every act of degradation and humiliation. Clip takes no hopeful turn—even a visit to a home for abandoned children ultimately says more about the characters' desperate self-absorption than exhibiting any substantive concern for society's rejects—and the extremely graphic depictions of sex and violence will be way too explicit for many viewers. But the performances of the young cast are impressive, and Milos' portrait of a generation in moral free-fall is unquestionably potent, with implications that go beyond the borders of Serbia. A strong optional purchase for only the most adventurous of collections. (F. Swietek)