The international title is already weird, but in Croatian it sounds even stranger. I saw “Accidental Luxuriance of the Translucent Watery Rebus” though the streaming service of the International Film Festival Rotterdam. It is an extremely experimental Croatian film.
Throwing in many different techniques, Barić created a kaleidoscopic film with low contrast, bright colours and a if there was a storyline, it eluded me. You get different types of animation, but also ‘normal film’, but with so man filters that it still looks like animation. Picture in picture, pictures in picture, perhaps the result reminds a bit of the cut-up style that William Burroughs came up with. What also reminds a bit of Burroughs are the lengthy surrealistic, intellectualistic monologues that can be found in many parts of the film. Other elements remind me a bit of Jodorowski. Unfortunately the subtitles were sometimes hard to read, so I missed quite a lot of these monologues.
The film has “noir” elements in the sense of a (or an apparent) murder investigation and the way certain scenes were shot. Like I said, everything is so much cut-up, that it did not really come across to me a a story (or stories).
Filmographically there are several amazing elements. The way the director lets one element go over in another amazed me on several occasions. The film is mostly interesting for reasons of visuals and montage. It is surprising, confusing and fascinating. I hope I can watch it again some time to see if I can make more of it.
When you are up for something really really weird you wil have to find another way than the IFFR as the screenings have stopped by the time I write this.
