‘A Ballad’ Review: A Woman Asserts Her Independence in a Bosnian Drama That Likewise Isn’t Cowed by Convention
variety.comGuy Lodge Film CriticAfter three solemn features centered on the ramifications of war — not just in her home country of Bosnia but, in 2017’s “Never Leave Me,” Syria too — writer-director Aida Begić leaves political conflict behind in her fourth. “A Ballad,” however, charges no less abrasively into the emotional battleground of a young woman’s separation from her long-term partner, and the personal, legal and familial skirmishes that hamper her fight for independence.
Very loosely inspired by the 17th-century South Slavic ballad “Hasanaginica,” Begić’s ambitious, jaggedly structured film brashly updates its moral of female sorrow and subservience to far more modern ideals of feminist resolve and rejection of the patriarchy.
Not every one of the film’s swirling subplots lands, just as not all its social and philosophical lines of inquiry come crisply into focus.
But this is the most distinctive and artistically exciting work yet from Begić, who won Cannes prizes for her first two features, 2008’s “Snow” and 2012’s “Children of Sarajevo,” and now for the first time unveils a film in her hometown festival of Sarajevo.
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