A Call Girl - Nina Ivanisin

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S E A R C H D V D B e a v e r

(aka 'Slovenka' or 'Slovenian Girl')

Directed by Damjan Kozole
Slovenia 2009

Having grown up in small-town Slovenia, 23-year-old Alexandra embraces the excitement and anonymity of big city life when she moves to the capital. She styles herself as a call girl, planning to take advantage of everything the city has to offer. But her isolated existence English studies and mortgage payments by day, call girl lifestyle by night is shattered when one of her clients, a visiting politician, dies of a heart attack on her watch. Alexandra must suddenly confront fear, guilt, and desperation as she finds herself pursued by a band of local pimps, as well as the cops, hot on her trail. The old village life she had escaped from might now become her only refuge.

***

An amoral coed gets more than she bargains for when she tries prostitution as a shortcut to the good life in “Slovenian Girl.” Smoothly made eighth feature from helmer Damjan Kozole centers on secrets, lies and a single-minded quest for money. Starting as a thriller but later switching tracks, the pic has its strongest selling point in Nina Ivanisin’s performance as the title character, one of the most coolly calculating antiheroines to grace the silver screen. Fests are already lined up; niche arthouse distribs that found success with Kozole’s gritty “Spare Parts” and “Labor Equals Freedom” should book “Girl.”

Excerpt from Alissa Simon at Variety located HERE

Posters

Theatrical Release: August 18th, 2009 - Sarajevo Film Festival

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DVD Review: Film Movement - Region 1 - NTSC

DVD Box Cover		CLICK to order from:
Distribution	Film Movement - Region 1 - NTSC
Runtime	1:31:21
Video	2.35:1 Aspect Ratio Average Bitrate: 6.67 mb/s NTSC 720x480 29.97 f/s
	NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes.
Bitrate:
Audio	Slovenian / English (Dolby Digital 2.0)
Subtitles	English, None
Features	Release Information: Studio: Film Movement Aspect Ratio: Original Aspect Ratio 2.35:1 Edition Details: • Test Biographies • A Call Girl theatrical trailer • This Month's Short Film - "Honored" (18:49) • Film Movement Previews DVD Release Date: September 7th, 2010 Transparent Keep Case Chapters: 12

Comments:

I'm kind of on the fence about A Call Girl but the conclusion was somehow satisfying although I felt it was a fairly unremarkable story. However, I watched intently, found it suspenseful... and touching. Nina Ivanisin has a kind of Anne Hathaway thing going on with her eyes and hair and she is a good centre for the camera which tends to follow her face continuously waiting for some telltales. She expresses the character's pain so subtly that it elevates the film experience. A Call Girl could have fallen flat if the part of Aleksandra was overplayed. There are some important positives here...

Despite being interlaced the Film Movement SD transfer looks very sharp. It's dual-layered and anamorphic. I *think* it is the correct standards conversion as the time is representative of the theatrical running length and it tends to look more like combing than ghosting. Bottom line is that visually it looked surprisingly impressive on my system without undue noise.

Audio is unremarkable with almost exclusively dialogue (Slovenian and a bit of English) sounding clean and consistent. There are optional English subtitles in an overly-bold gaudy yellow font.

The extras don't include much on A Call Girl with 3 text biographies (Nina Ivanisin, Peter Musevski and Damjan Kozole) and a trailer. Film Movement have added their "Short of the Month" entitled 'Honored' by Stephanie Fischette. It's about 20-minutes and centers on Katie (Elizabeth Moss), a young woman whose retreat into isolation is interrupted one afternoon by a visit from Philip (Charles Borland), a soldier bearing unsent letters from her husband Carl, who died in Iraq. I enjoyed this - very good effort.

There were segments of A Call Girl that reminded me of the Dardenne's Rosetta. Specifically the character's desperate economic desires at the root of her spiralling troubles - there is even a duplicated scene of Aleksandra massaging her own stomach as she lies alone in bed - hinting at stress/ulcers. Morality seems a minor issue. A Call Girl exports a relatively unseen cultural slice-of-life from Ljubljana establishing empathy with building turmoil in an, essentially, naive co-ed as an anti-hero protagonist. It is definitely no masterpiece but it is a film I will revisit.