Showtimes & Tickets Enter Zip Code:

SPARE PARTS
Written & Directed by: Damjan Kozole.
Produced by: Danijel Hocevar.
Director of Photography: Radislav Jovanov-Gonzo.
Edited by: Andrija Zafranovic.
Music by: Igor Leonardi.
Released by: Film Movement.
Language: Slovenian with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: Slovenia. 84 min. Not Rated.
With: Peter Musevski, Aljoša Kovacic & Aleksandra Balmazovic.
DVD Features: Biographies of Director & Actors. Short film “The Youth in Us,” directed by Joshua Leonard.

The best moments of this 2003 Slovenian film (shot in great documentary-like fashion by Radislav Jovanov-Gonzo) are, suitably enough, its most sparely simple and sober-eyed that just let events play out casually, adding an appealingly modest slice-of-life quality. A young man, Rudi (Aljoša Kovacic), begins working for the gruff Ludvik (a superb Peter Musevski), a widowed, washed-up speedway motorcycle racer. In Ludvik's van, they furtively transport refugees from Croatia, through Slovenia, and to the Italian border.

There are many ways to interpret the title. Not only is there – as explained by Ludvik – the possibility that the smuggled immigrants could be killed for their bodily “spare parts,” but one comes to realize that Ludvik is also, in his own way, a dispensable pawn of modern economic and cultural forces. If not exactly a “victim,” the case can be made that he’s a pragmatic, reluctant cog in a machine – a factor most successfully conveyed through the film’s less didactic scenes.

As might be clear by now, there’s a tension at work between the small scale of writer/director Damjan Kozole’s filmmaking and his ambitious, even grandiose, political concerns, which he unnecessarily inserts into the movie in certain instances. The human cost – suicide, forced prostitution, accidental death – and the toll on one’s conscience from human trafficking are sufficiently harrowing in and of themselves without Ludvik’s monologues condemning globalization or critically comparing the European Union (which Slovenia later joined, thereby presumably putting a dent in his people-smuggling business) to Hitler’s dream of a unified Europe (and which are as clumsily executed as they sound).

Spare Parts feels more genuine when it’s not coming across as a treatise, and, instead, concentrating on intimate details, such as Ludvik’s having worked as a test smoker for a tobacco company (perhaps contributing to his ill health); the humorous touches of his frequently referring to himself in the third person; the smugglers bad-mouthing drug dealers, apparently oblivious to their own hypocrisy; and, for all of his bluster, the reality that Ludvik himself answers to an offscreen supervisor, whom he calls simply “the boss.” Paradoxically, the movie’s final note is puzzlingly artificial. At this point, the film should have evinced political outrage, as opposed to coming to a bittersweet, sentimental resolution.

DVD Extras: 2005’s “The Youth in Us,” a 12-minute short featuring strong performances by Lukas Haas and the luminescent Kelli Garner, approaches its controversial topic with muddled symbolism. Once one is clued in on the surprise twist during Haas’ retelling of a childhood memory, the piece feels, on repeat viewing, more like an elaborately odd joke. (Here’s a hint as to the Important Issue involved: take the last three words of the title, and say them quickly. If you think you’ve got it…you’re right.) Reymond Levy
June 12, 2007