How can you resist a film in which the wonderful Monica Bellucci says “the only thing that makes sense is loving someone, no matter how!”? In addition, there are many fairy tale-like, lovable ideas in there: milk drinking rattlesnakes, dancing falcons, blood bathing geese, a huge clock from Austria-Hungary that loves biting people more than anything else, a Lynchian torn off ear, an old woman playing strip poker on an old computer, rain drops that drop in the rhythm of fiery music. Yes, Emir Kusturica’s (ARIZONA DREAM, BLACK CAT, WHITE CAT) ninth feature is about love, “three true stories and a long of fantasy”. It’s about a conflict in a mountain region on the Balkan peninsula. Will war win or will love? Kusturica himself plays milkman Kosta who can’t complain about a lack of women interested in him He is supposed to marry the wild, hard-drinking village beauty. The only woman more fascinating is the Italian (Bellucci) who appears one day. The fact that she is promised to another doesn’t prevent Kosta from running away with her. ON THE MILKY ROAD is subtly erotic, a bit tragic, and effortless with a lot excellent, enervating surrealism which are unthinkable in German cinema. Shortly before the end of the 125 minute film Kusturica and Bellucci have to hide in a knotty old tree. Not only does the tree house them as if they were its children. It also gives them wings. Wings that only exist because of love, there’s no other way of understanding Kusturica.

Matthias von Viereck

Translation: Elinor Lewy