Briefly, the plot of A Serbian Film to save you from watching it involves an ageing, struggling porn star who agrees to participate in an art film without realising that his directors brand of pornography involves newborn children. The premise is supposedly a dark joke, but its difficult to say whether its being made at the expense of the films characters, the Serbian film industry or the viewer. Director Srdan Spasojevic claimed his film was a parody of the kind of politically correct features being made in Serbia, but the rest of the world begged to differ and the picture was promptly banned in Australia, Malaysia and Singapore, among other countries. In the UK, the film was trimmed by 4 minutes, excising some of the sexual violence. Mark Kermode, reviewing the film for the BBC, called it a nasty piece of exploitation trash redolent of the excesses of Ruggero Deodato. If it is somehow an allegory of Serbian family and Serbian politics, he said, then the allegory gets lost amidst the increasingly stupid splatter. What other movie scenes do you think are too extreme to explain? Share any missed down in the comments.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
