Hey Babu Riba

Four old friends are reunited in their native Yugoslavia at the funeral of their childhood companion, a once vivacious young girl they each secretly adored and together helped escape to the West. Now middle aged and melancholy, and confronted again by the unresolved mysteries of their past, they recall the events that drew them together and cast them apart so many years earlier. The story is at once both romantic and perceptive, showing the personal and political traumas of growing up in the Balkans during the 1950s, but with a bittersweet glow of nostalgia underlining the end of innocence for characters and country alike. The understated grace of the film is perhaps best revealed at the moment when the young heroine is seduced by an unscrupulous Communist Party member (a rival of her four friends), whose twin tattoos of Stalin and Lenin appear to caress her flesh, striking just one of the many grace notes in an altogether memorable drama.

I was intrigued by the title, so during a small bout of insomnia (fueled by my curiosity...), I stayed up and watched it. I then checked my TV listings and watched it again! There is one very obvious realization that occurred to me when I saw this film- in spite of politics, traditions, culture, etc., teenagers everywhere are virtually the same. The characters of the kids from Belgrade could have been transported to, let's say, somewhere in the American Midwest during the same time period, and language differences aside, would be impossible to tell apart from any of the local teens of that era. They certainly displayed the same growing pains and preoccupations, politics aside: Music, sex, movie idols, music, drinking, sports, music... As a matter of fact, much the same things that occupied my time growing up in 1970's Southern California.

This was a bittersweet story, but the joy of youth made it very enjoyable. The characters, especially the young actors, were completely believable also. I won't say this was the Yugoslav "American Graffiti", but I will say that it fits in nicely with other 50's-themed movies.

This coming of age movie is significantly more than just that; it is a metaphor for Yugoslav expatriates who left their beloved country after it was cleverly and tragically tricked by the false pretenses of the communists.

My personal feeling is that you cannot divorce this movie from its political/historical underpinnings like so many (American) reviewers tend to do. This is not about growing up on Main Street, USA. It is about growing up in Yugoslavia at a time when it was torn between the East and the West. Just like the guys are torn between Esther and everybody else, and Esther is torn between the "Tovarish Joe" and the guys. There is shame in certain situations that is lost on an audience that has never lived under Tito. I feel the movie is under-rated and it is too bad we have lost the director. Movies like this make freedom feel more important. It is not just "another Eastern European coming of age film"...it is a sensitive portrayal of teenagers walking a fine line that might eventually lead them to real freedom.

In the mid 1980s--before Yugoslavia broke apart and unleashed the strife and ethnic cleansing that prompted international intervention--Torvill and Dean skated "Bolero" on the Olympic ice rink at Sarajevo, and the not yet fractured nation gave us one of the more memorable European films of the era.

Hey Babu Riba presents the beautifully bittersweet story of a quartet of teenagers who form a rowing team, and the female coxswain with whom each is in love. The movie is set dually in summer 1953 and September 1985, in the first case just after the death of Joseph Stalin. The Soviet dictator, despite his demise, has a residual presence in the form of a forearm tattoo and a menacing group of apparatchiks from the ministry of culture (propaganda).

Glen, Sasha, Kicha, Pop, and Mirjana are a "four"--referring to the number of oars, not the number of friends--with quadruple aspirations to become a pair. They are Yankophiles, and take English classes from a woman in Belgrade. When Glen asserts, "I know that Glenn Miller is the best musician in the world," their teacher coaches them that an English speaker would not say, "I know…." in such a context, but rather, "I think…." When the young man applies the lesson at (what appears to be) the U.S. Information Agency office, he finds to his astonishment that his rehearsed memorization works conversationally, although the hip young African-American who staffs the office prefers Gershwin.

Which sets up some background from which the ensuing plot unfolds. Hey Babu Riba opens on a boxcar, approaching the northern Croatian coast, to the singing of "Te Quiero Dijiste" (1929) by Mexican female composer Maria Grever (1894-1951). It comes to the group by way of its use in a 1944 Esther Williams movie, Bathing Beauty. The coxswain thus becomes not Mirjana, but Esther, and the song, which pervades Hey Babu Riba, imprints itself as the movie's signature. The result is a classic of nostalgic youth. Jovan Acin (1941-1991) is the director.