| Actors:
| Susan Anspach, Erland Josephson, Per Oscarsson, Marianna Jacobi, James Marsh | | Director:
| Dusan Makavejev | | Format:
| Color, Dolby, DVD, Letterboxed, Original recording remastered, Widescreen, NTSC | | Language:
| English | | Number of Discs:
| 1 | | Studio:
| Fox Lorber | | Run Time:
| 96 minutes | | DVD Release Date:
| March 31, 1998 | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 13 reviews |
|
Average Customer Review:
 ( 13 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
34 of 36 found the following review helpful:
 Generally ignored satire of Ingmar Bergman moviesDec 23, 1998
By groley@erols.com
Professional reviewers seem to have missed the obvious; Montenegro is an amusing parody of Ingmar Bergman movies. It mixes Bergman's combination of intellectual and vulgar comedy with the usual ambiguities: from beginning to end, one is never sure whether the heroine (Susan Anspach in her best role) is merely a bored housewife or dangerously insane. Similarly, one can't be sure whether the world of Yugoslavian immigrants that she enters is safer or more dangerous than her normal life. The real key is found when it becomes obvious that the psychiatrist (hired by her husband) is more clearly disturbed than any potential patient. If you're tired of Woody Allen takeoffs on Bergman, see Montenegro.
17 of 17 found the following review helpful:
 An inspired work/performanceDec 11, 2004
By M. Moore
It's too bad Susan Anspach never became an international star. Her performance here is rich and detailed and full of subtlety. Many do not realize that this movie was based on a real life ex-Patriot wife who did poison her european family after being so fed up with her life and her uninvolved husband. There is some raw eroticism here (that was typical of the edgier filmmaking of the time) but it is surely not pornographic. The comedic situations in the film are dark and dry. I first watched it when it was in theatres and went back twice. I've watched it again through the years, and it still holds up. Mid-life crisis or not, I think anyone can relate to wanting to not just live life, but to feel it full force. The soundtrack includes the wonderful "Ballad of Lucy Jordan," by Marianne Faithful.
18 of 19 found the following review helpful:
interesting movieDec 11, 2003
Mrs. Jordan is a rich house wife. She got all the things that maybe all of us need: a family, a couple of kids, a palatial house by the sea... But the movie shows the emptiness of her life: she is bored, she doesn't like her life. Her husband decides get some holidays on Brazil these Christmas... She decides to go with him but at the airport she falls in with some Yugoslavian immigrants that run a bar called Zanzibar. Attracted by their way of living she enters Zanzibar, she feels very well, she feels something different, she realizes that doesn't need all the things she had... When she phones her family, she finds out that her daughter (a nine years old girl) has taken her place at home: the girl cooks, cleans... Her husband says "it is so peaceful when your mother is not here"... He doesn't love her... And this is the problem: since Mrs. Jordan is unable to understand that, that her family doesn't need her, that all her life was wasted, and although she feels alive in Zanzibar, she forgets that she doesn't belong to the world of the Yugoslavian immigrants: she is out of place. So really she has no way to go. Very sad. Understanding that all your life was a nonsense, understanding that all your life has always been empty I suppose is not easy: so she kills the man who becomes her lover in Zanzibar and then kills all her family including the psychiatrist her husband hired !!!: the movie got some comic moments, but is not a joke in anyway. Makavejev scoffs at family, materialism, capitalism..., he is telling you "forget the money, forget the clothes, just feel the heat of life..." Think of it.
Very good movie.
18 of 22 found the following review helpful:
Delightful but different. R and Lively. Anspach superb.Jul 14, 2001
By Dr. Alan D. Kardoff
"animal lover"
The movie begins with a family that seems to be duller than Dagwood & Blonde. Everyone seems safe. But Anspach, the lovely wife has a lust and yearning for excitement or at least a change of pace. She meets a neat guy who is part of gypsy clan. Somehow she wanders away from home and gets into a group of gypsies. The man's name is Montenegro. The vagabonds live a carefree life of abandon. Lots of love, lust and some women dancing in the buff for their own joy and group satisfaction. Anspach "tries" to resist Montenegro and their passion sizzles the screen. She adapts to the new life and seems more in it than to be a part of a family with a cockhold (dullard) of a husband. The end puzzled me in a way. Does she return for good or? I found the movie much more lively and enjoyable than the reviews. At the same time, this is NOT porn. The movie shows contrasting cultures (staid vs gypsy) and Anspach won my heart as well as admiration for her beauty and acting. I note a new version is coming out. The 81 edition is excellent. I am reluctant to part with this VHS. It is worth watching two-four times at intervals and when in different moods. Each time one comes away livelier and also seeing new perspectives. Dr. Alan Kardoff, Mgmtdr
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
An exercise in postmodernismNov 18, 2005
By PolarisDiB
"dibness"
I really don't like doing the whole, "Not many people will understand this," vein, but this movie really isn't for everybody. I personally got so much from it from my first viewing, and yet I got the strange feeling that no one else in the theatre I was in really quite "got it", so to speak. A lot of them laughed heartily, but they seemed to laugh at the apparent "randomness" of it, but none of it was random at all. This is a very precise and firmly crafted piece of postmodern art.
First of all, the climax is somewhat in the beginning when she says "I hate being in this movie!" and the very beginning is really the last shot. A lot of situations that incited laughter only did so after the punchline had already been given moments beforehand. A lot of this film is circuitous and self-reflexive, and everything breaks down so that any given meaning something may have eventually undermines itself later. The thing that's excellent about it is how precise and organized it is at breaking everything down into structureless structure. The acting is great but unnecessary because the characters just say what they're thinking/feeling/etc. The story is of a bourgeois woman who falls in love with a man from a lower class and lives happily ever after... only not really. Montenegro is a character only he's one of the most incidental and least important. The children are the caretakers. The adults are the adolescents. And so on...
This film gets a lot of laughs from its irony, but mostly it's a very tense film to try to watch, and I would have MUCH preferred watching it in private so that I wouldn't feel the tension mounting in the auditorium as people literally strained to try to make sense of it. So by all means, believe my intentions are good when I say this film is not for everybody.
--PolarisDiB
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