Drama adds more insult to injury.
If Muslims has not been bashed on enough, Radoslav Spassov’s extremely bizarre and highly impossible love story about a Bulgarian getting together with a Turk is amateurish storytelling at best. Radoslav Spassov’s Stolen Eyes (OTKRADNARI OCHI) might be of some relevance to national audiences from both sides of the border – but unfortunately for a film to take on a potentially strong subject matter only to blindly shift the storyline towards a completely absurd outcome makes this an experience worth not seeing.
The regeneration process – as described by the film refers to a point of ethnic rinsing that occurred in Bulgarian history when military officials had the task of erasing the identity of a people. The point is addressed by poorly describing how the aggressive shifts affects two souls – a sort of opposite sides of the fence format. One is an army brat with a high IQ and looks like German F1 driver Michael Schumacher while the other a school teacher with plenty of bite. The tale basically pits the two together through every circumstance possible – the highlight is a laughable psychiatric ward sequence which defies any sort of logic.
The film is horribly weak form the start – while the screenplay adds some necessary docu-drama moments, the film’s direction is awfully inept. The performances from the two leads have no backbone – it sort of feels as if the go through the pages of the script rather than the emotions of the characters. The one point in the narrative which sends the two to the loony bin is then later replaced by the most ludicrous of scenarios – the event that tops the film is a sort of peaceful union of two making the rest of the film feel like a sham. Stolen Eyes dares to go to the wrong places with an off-putting message of peace, at least in a recent film like The Syrian Bride – the dramatic tension feels a lot more authentic.
Montreal World Film Festival 2005
