Do You Remember Dolly Bell? DVD, 1981

Emir Kusturica's first film Do You Remember Dolly Bell? is a bittersweet comedy set in the former Yugoslavia during the 1960s. The film, which won the Golden Lion Prize at the 1981 Venice Film Festival, is both a coming of age story and a tribute to the city of Sarajevo, long before it was devastated by civil war. To the chagrin of his strict Communist father (Slobodan Aligrudic), sixteen-year old Dino (Slavo Stimac) is more into hypnosis and self-help mantras than Marxist ideology. He recites the phrase "Every day in every way I'm getting better and better" and sings in a new band mandated by the local Eastern European bureaucracy as they relax the Communist grip and allow some influence of Western culture. Dino's family of six live in a cramped one-room house while they wait for state housing. The father drinks excessively and the family is poor. Through Dino's relationship with Sonny, an unsavory pimp, he meets a cabaret singer and prostitute Dolly Bell (Ljiljana Blagojevic), named after a stripper in an Italian film they had seen recently at the Culture Club. Dolly is forced by Sonny to wait in the attic of Dino's home until he returns and Dino is a passive onlooker as a band of delinquent boys take their turn with her. Dino's sweet innocence captivates the young girl and the two form a bond that results in Dino's sexual initiation and first love affair. Dino has to cope with his father's illness and their days together reveal a much mellower man who tells Dino he knew about the girl in the loft and no longer disapproves his using hypnosis and auto-suggestion. Dolly Bell is an honest and intelligent film that avoids sentimentality and provides compelling insight into what it meant to grow up in Eastern Europe during the sixties.

Howard Schumann on 13th July 2006
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