Good marketing can do wonders for a film, even those made by small cinema industries like Croatian. Director Dalibor Matanić has benefited from that with his feature debut, 2000 film Cashier Wants to Go to the Seaside. It wasn’t particularly good or popular film, but it had very good box office results for Croatian standards that could be explained with a very good trailer and intense promotion on Croatian state television.
Protagonist is Barica (played by Dora Polić), single mother who lives with her sick daughter in working class neighbourhood of Zagreb and tries to make ends meet by working as a cashier in local grocery store. The store is run by Miljenko (played by Ivan Brkić), store manager from Western Herzegovina who treats it as his personal fiefdom. Barica has worked hard in order to save enough money for a trip to the coast where she hopes that a fresh air would help improve daughter’s condition. Miljenko, however, has different ideas, especially when the store staff is joined by Jadranka (played by Nina Violić), new, young and seductive clerk who also happens to be from Western Herzegovina. Using her background and female charms he easily manipulates Miljenko into giving her extra money and all kinds of perks. Miljenko expects this to result in romantic getaway so Barica’s plans of taking days off are threatened. Although she never dared say anything to Miljenko, Barica had finally had enough and decides to take action and try fighting for her rights.
Cashier Wants to Go to the Seaside was mostly misunderstood by non-Croatian critics who had seen it as hilarious comedy. The trailer would have given the same impression, but those who watch the film would be more likely to put the film into realm of serious social drama. The film was made less than a decade since country’s independence and few years after the war which created sharp divisions in Croatian society between minority which prospered through illegal and unethical means and majority that, like Barica, tried to do the right thing only to see their dreams and future crushed in the most humiliating ways. To make things even worse for Barica, she has to constantly interact with senior citizens who remind her of 1970s when things, despite being in different country and under different system, used to be much better. This nostalgic impression underlined with the use of pop soundtrack characteristic of the period, which includes songs of Novi Fosili band and singer Drago Diklić (who even appears in the film in cameo role). Problem for Dalibor Matanić, who also wrote the script, is that he can’t find the way out of this bleakness, at least not with this attempts of humour which are too far and few in between (with best gags being, just like in typical Hollywood comedy, being used in trailer). So, he invents rather unconvincing character of philosophy-discussing police inspector (played by Milan Štrljić) who is there simply to provide Barica and audience with something resembling happy ending.
There is also another issue with Cashier Wants to Go to the Seaside, which probably won’t be noticed by non-Croatian viewers or those unfamiliar with regional, cultural and political issues in Croatia at the end of 1990s. Matanić offers simple answer to all those asking questions how and why all that went so disastrously wrong in the country. For him that question is in the form Western Herzegovina Croats, ethnic group which used wartime patriotic euphoria and the post-Communist chaos to invade Croatian capital, create all-powerful network and run things in a way that brought rural Balkan values into the previously unspoiled oasis of urban civilised orderly Mitteleureopean values of Zagreb. In the 1990s the same group was associated with Croatian Democratic Union, ruling party which was ousted from power shortly before the production of the film. Matanić in Cashier Wants to Go to the Seaside displays nativist sentiment which was characteristic for large urban areas of Croatia and its intelligentsia. The problem is that he does so in rather crude manner that would look disturbing if certain details were different – like, for example ethnic Serb minority being portrayed that way few years earlier by rabid Croatian nationalists or, to make things even more disturbing, like Jews by Goebbels’ propaganda in 1930s and 1940s Nazi Germany. Matanić, however, did relatively decent job as a director, at least for generally low standards of Croatian cinema at the time, so Cashier Wants to Go to the Seaside is watchable, although not enough to deserve recommendation.
RATING: 4/10 (++)
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