In this downbeat drama, which won the Yugoslavian national film award in 1987, no one escapes the sufferings of the previous generation. In the story, Mihalo started out in life as a piano prodigy, but the agony his family went through when he was a youth dried his creative juices up entirely: his father was sentenced to death by a revolutionary court and his mother attempted suicide. Now he is a middle-aged man who teaches music and piano at an adult education center. His bleak existence is briefly uplifted by the unexpected attentions he receives from a lovely young girl who has problems of her own. She is only using a sexual/romantic connection with him to escape her family's ills. Her features and manner remind him of his beloved aristocratic mother. Soon a series of events drives him right over the edge and he winds up committing some horrible crimes of his own, which traumatize the next generation.
by Clarke Fountain
synopsis
