Butler's Cinema Scene

“TAKE ME SOMEWHERE NICE” My rating: C+

91 minutes | No MPAA rating

The title of Ena Sendijarevic’s “Take Me Somewhere Nice” drips with irony. Like the film’s young protagonist, we might dream of the good life, but we’re not going to find it in modern-day Bosnia.

Alma (Sara Luna Zoric) lives in the Netherlands with her mother. They fled war-torn Bosnia when Alma was a baby, leaving behind her father, whom she has visited only once or twice.

Now, though, the old man is in a hospital and wants to see his offspring one last time. So Alma reluctantly boards a plane bound for her birthplace.

Her first glimpse of “home” is not encouraging. The airport is sterile and all but abandoned. The restaurants don’t have half the items listed on the menu. The cars are held together with baling wire and the crumbling high-rise apartment buildings are like something left over from the Soviet era.

The people, as embodied by her cousin Emir (Ernad Prnjavorac), aren’t much better. Emir is a surly oaf whose livelihood may be linked to petty crime; in any case he resents this familial obligation and goes out of his way not to be helpful.

At least his running buddy Denis (Lazar Dragoevic) is willing to pay attention to the visitor, though he clearly expects to be rewarded with easy sex. And he does have a certain moronic charm.

Basically “Take Me Somewhere Nice” is a road trip as Alma makes her way to the provincial burg where her dad lies dying. She starts out solo — Emir cannot be bothered — but is left stranded and without her luggage when the bus departs from a rest stop without her.

She is adopted by Jovana (Jasna Djuricic), a middle-aged “singer” making the rounds of hotel bars and small-town dance halls. She’s almost sexually assaulted by a drunken businessman (what’s really disturbing is that she seems okay with that), but is more or less kidnapped by Emir and Denis, who have been shamed by Alma’s mother into finding her and delivering her to Daddy.

Along the way the three come into possession of a suitcase full of drugs, which they sell for a big wad of cash. This being Bosnia, though, there’s really nothing interesting to spend it on.

“Take Me Somewhere Nice” might be viewed as a Jarmush-y black comedy, though there’s little overt humor. The characters reek of Balkan ennui and smothered expectations. They rarely smile or, for that matter, exhibit much in the way of personality.

The good news is that leading lady Zoric exudes a sort of bored eroticism that keeps our attention; she might even be attractive if her face wasn’t always frozen in a perpetual scowl.

Sendijarevic’s screenplay finds ways to make points about the country’s almost-Third-World standing. There are rants against the European tourists who come to Bosnia to eat and drink on the cheap. And Cousin Emir obviously resents that his cousin has escaped to the west, but compensates with brainless boastful nationalism.

Called on this by Alma, he says he’s not a nationalist, but a patriot. “One is based on hatred,” she observes, “the other on love.”

Ultimately “Take Me Somewhere Nice” pushes its low-keyed approach too far…it’s hard to get invested in the characters’ plights when their dullness is relieved only by brief flashes of sullenness.

| Robert W. Butler