REVIEW - CIRCLES

Complex thoughts and challenging ideas are replaced by melodrama and contrivance in Srdan Golubovic's high-minded and highly strung tale of guilt and prejudice. The triple-stranded plot feels honest, though, only it can't be that hard to drum up three soap opera subplots that reach their dramatic peak at the same chronological point. An act of kindness and an act of brutality affect several people, each from the same town in war-torn Bosnia, even twelve years later, as they reside in different parts of Europe. In his concern for how those acts have shaped these people's lives in those twelve years, Golubovic's film is astute, if somewhat light on detail. Such astuteness comes to a halt when the drama reaches its central focus, and Golubovic and co-writer Melina Pota Koljevic succumb to sentiment and to narrative resolutions that feel much too pat for material whose roots lie in such fertile, delicate soil. Initially revered themes are put on the back burner, though the commitment to them was perhaps never that strong, as on closer inspection they appear cosmetic and arbitrary, providing nothing in return to its potent setting for all that it reaps from it. The film's first half, in which Golubovic's appetite for activity has yet to reach danger point, doesn't force the connections between its three storylines, and the gradual apprehension of specifics is very involving; would that the film resisted betraying such audience involvement by neglecting to develop the ideas it purports to have at its heart. Aleksandar Ilic's cinematography is robust. Acting is modest but effective from the whole ensemble.