Popular reviews

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  Review by Terése Flynn ★★★½ 13

  It hit me a couple of hours ago that I need to get going watching some Serbian movies, me taking a trip to Serbia in three weeks. And this one being available to stream on Hulu made it an obvious choice (and a kick in the butt).

  Sex, dead babies in a jar, strudels, an autopsy of a female, phallus, Adam and Eve, rats, soap bubbles, getting rid of a dead body, what is really an egg made of? What is this movie telling me?

  Living with a Serb I had a hard time not focusing on that the male part of the relationship (of this couple we're following) not only being very much older than the woman, but also…

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  Review by Arthur Slugworth ★★★★

  I'm not much of a fan of nominalizations but The Affair, Or... is best understood as a visual treatise on human love, seen through the lens of structuralism.

  The film opens with ancient erotic art, then moves into a didactic lecture regarding human romance, and finally moves to the beginning, then the end, then back to the middle of a tragic narrative between a young switchboard operator and her older paramour. The film's approach prioritizes the dissection of its chosen theme over its own narrative; although these various portals of interpretation let some of the proverbial blood out of what could otherwise be a tense thriller, the academic treatment of its subject takes its viewer as both intelligent and curious.…

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  Review by Abhishek ★★★★

  Adroitly Utilizing its genre-bending aspects and radical narrative structure, Makavejev's 2nd feature delivers a felicitous analysis of love, liberation, and sexuality in his promiscuous manner embracing the force of modernity in the face of societal orthodoxies. Keeping the balance between cinematic lucidity and efficacy, this film does the trick to reflect a critical statement against the socio-political oppression and communal ideologies causing individual tragedies with an apt dose of humor, truth, and humanism.

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  Review by Sally Jane Black 3

  Moments of weird imagery and broken narrative break up a story that seems pretty straight forward once it's all settled, a simple case of jealousy and possessiveness (tired old tales). It does not make the eventual Moment less painful to watch knowing more or less what is going to happen--and that's clear even from the title of the film. Anticipation is a potent emotion, one that feels like little hooks on the flesh, pulling on you. The release is both a relief and a moment of pain.

  The best part, and this is just my being ridiculous, is, of course, the cat that finds its way onto nude bodies throughout the film. More films should accessorize moments of prurience with cats, give everyone something to look at. It's not pornographic, mind you, nor bestial. Just an adorable interloper. It would actually even improve Sweet Movie.

  December count: 7/100

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  Review by Rakestraw ★★★½ 2

  I just want to call off work one day and have myself a Dusan Makavejev marathon. This Yugoslavian director is slowly becoming one of my favorite directors...too bad he only has a handful of features.

  Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator is a simple love story that benefits greatly from Makavejev's creative structuring. At the core, LAotCotMSO has the romance between a young switchboard operator named Izabela (Eva Ras) and the preeminent rat exterminator Ahmed (Slobodan Aligrudic). They fall in love, move in together, upgrade their household (shower installation!...good for you!) and, frankly, living in an idyllic relationship.

  The creativity of Makavejev's structuring comes in the form of interjecting this simple love story with numerous tangents,…

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  Review by Silversaxophone ★★★★

  A sexologist introduces the irrational social repression of what is a normal and mundane biological function. Izabela, the Switchboard Operator, is a sensual and vital young girl, and she makes a nonsense of the sexologist's pronouncements because, clearly, she's something special and magical. The tone would be comic, except that Makavjev lets us know early on that something horrible happens to Izabela, and the faux documentary scenes embedded within the non-linear narrative structure objectify her. Izabela becomes a symbol of freedom restricted by false consciousness, and part of her tragedy is the result of a lack of self-discipline and her middle-aged, rat-catcher boyfriend's inability to deal with her. The joie de vivre of Makavejev's approach inclines toward black comedy, but the clinical scenes in the morgue throw a tragic pall over the happiness in the everyday which is lost forever. And in that sense, Makavejev reaches beyond the political into the existential.

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  Review by Robert Beksinski ★★★★ 1

  Early Dusan Makaveje showcases his creative style undiluted and with precision craft. Seriously, the editing and cinematography were on par with what many consider his greatest achievement in W.R. Mysteries of the Organism but did not have the same depth in content to surpass it overall. Actually with what I would normally expect from Makaveje in being an absurdist/surrealistic film, it turned out not to really be either in any traditional sense. Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (which has to be one of the longest titles in which I will not mention again in my review) is simply a straightforward love story turned tragic formed and crafted with experimental influence.

  However even if there is…

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  Review by Ziggy Francis ★★★

  This movie is quite dated. And I don't quite think it's themes strike as hard as they probably did when it was released. Dusan Makavejev is an incredible director from what I've seen but this one didn't hit as hard as sweet movie or mysteries of the orgasm did for me. Also thanks for 135 followers. I recommend not following me because it won't get much better from here. I appreciate all of you, stop giving me attention

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  Review by Cahiers Du Cinéma

  Jacques Aumont: 'Several Routes to a Reading: Switchboard Operator'
  ('Lecture a plusieurs voies', Cahiers du Cinema 197, Christmas 1967 - January 1968)

  There are some films (for instance, Les Carabiniers, Les Contrabandieres) which are difficult to approach and which present the naked eye with surfaces as slippery as the celluloid they are made of. The nature of these films has already been discussed and explained in these pages and so, by a process of deduction, has the effort they demand of the spectator.

  Makavejev's second film is far from making any imperious demand for alertness of that kind on the part of the spectator. From the very beginning the way the film functions demonstrates a power few could match. At…

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  Review by Tori 🐛 ★★★★

  Thought this was a sex comedy! Boy was I surprised!

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  Review by feels_for_reels ★★★½

  An ill-fated romance between a switchboard operator and an exterminator, brief meditations on historical cultural fascinations with sex, the evolutionary history of a certain species of rat, informative talks on the criminal mind and decay of the human body after death, and Soviet-era communist propaganda - its all here, folks. And somehow it all comes together to make a charming little film, though one that - in my opinion - suffers from its (very) short runtime, because I was left wanting more and feeling like it could have been more (but of course, this is preferable to being glad that it was over)

  It was never anything less than fascinating, although admittedly how the politics of the story connect to…

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  Review by Ethan Vestby

  “In Yugoslavia, a rodent sanitation specialist is like being a podcaster.”
  @phoebe_bridgers

  45k RTs 98k hearts