MOVIE REVIEW : A LOOK AT LIFE IN THE LAND OF TITO

A man on a train is rebuffed by a woman, who utters that deathless question, “When will you get a divorce?!”

Next we see the man with his wife and two little boys in a cozy domestic scene, then the man encountering this ex-mistress at an aeronautics pageant. She in turn confides in another man that this ex-lover criticized a political cartoon featuring a portrait of Stalin looking down on Karl Marx. The next thing the lover knows, he’s sent off to a labor camp.

All this happens so swiftly at the beginning of Emir Kusturica’s superb “When Father Was Away on Business” (at Laemmle’s Fine Arts) that it takes you by surprise as much as it does its feckless hero Mesa (Miki Manojlovic). It’s Yugoslavia, 1950, a time of political schizophrenia when Tito was still consolidating his power and independence from the Soviet Union--a time when a chance remark could lead to dire consequences. So many people suffered imprisonment for political reasons at that time that it spawned the euphemism for their fate, “being away on business.”

In Mesa’s instance, the reason isn’t political but rather the result of the pique of a jealous woman. The man to whom the woman (the lush Mira Furlan) does her informing is none other than Mesa’s own brother-in-law (Mustafa Nadarevic), a party official who exploits the paranoia of the period to compensate for being Furlan’s second choice.

“When Father Was Away on Business” is not the grim picture it sounds. With an irresistible warmth and boundless good humor, Kusturica and his writer, Abdulah Sidran, grapple with the absurdity of Mesa’s fate and celebrate his--and his family’s--ability to endure hardship and injustice. The film is at once an endearing family saga, a political satire and a history of a treacherous time of change. Since the film unfolds through the eyes of Mesa’s younger, 6-year-old son Malik (Moreno De Bartoli), it is also the story of a child’s first glimpse of the adult world in all its contradictions and inequities.

Once Mesa has left for an unknown destination for an unknown duration of time, his wife, Sensa (Mirjana Karanovic), struggles to support her family as a seamstress, sustained by the devotion of her little boys who earn what they can and solemnly empty their pockets for her, down to the last coin. In time, Sensa at last receives word from Mesa, who is allowed a visit from his family; Malik promptly writes his father that he’s “sorry you have to do voluntary labor in the mine.”

At 31, Emir Kusturica, who studied under Czechoslovakia’s Jiri Menzel, director of the Oscar-winning “Closely Watched Trains,” has made only one previous feature, the similar, recently released “Do You Remember Dolly Bell?” Yet he has the unique distinction of winning the Golden Lion at Venice with his first film and the Golden Palm at Cannes this year with his second. Even more than “Dolly Bell,” “When Father Was Away” has an incredible richness of incident and depth of emotion. Kusturica and Sidran have that magical gift of having thought of everything, coupled with the ability of making it all seem spontaneous. They work from their hearts without losing their heads. They can get away with the sentimental “Anniversary Waltz” as a theme and lots of passionate folk music because it is anchored in so bleak and cruel a predicament.

Their film brims over with life because they’re aware of so much going on at all times. They know how to make not simply jokes, but references and motifs pay off with the skill of a Wilder and a Diamond. The constant radio broadcasts of soccer matches so beloved by Mesa and his boys allow the film to end with the jubilant news that Yugoslavia has bested the Soviet Union in the qualifying matches for the 1952 Olympics; the insistent whir of a fan that accompanies Mesa’s initial interrogation by his brother-in-law is repeated at the climax of the film under much happier circumstances. And little Malik’s sleepwalking, which results in his having a bell tied to his toe at night culminates in the film’s comic set piece in which Malik, jealous and craving attention, keeps interrupting his parents’ reunion love-making by tugging on his bell.

The very large cast is miraculous. The dark, slight Manojlovic brings to mind Giancarlo Giannini both in appearance and comic talent in his portrayal of a loving husband and father who just can’t resist straying. Karanovic is a pretty but worn wife and mother, a figure of implacable strength, sometimes amusingly so, and plump, little De Bartoli manages to be precocious without being obnoxious. Especially lovely is Jelena Covic as the bright, little Russian girl who is the object of Malik’s first crush.

Kusturica shares with Jean Renoir that rare capacity for embracing one and all. Like Renoir, Kusturica can look evil right in the eye, deplore it for its terrible consequences yet realize that when emotions are at last spent, its perpetrators are more effectively disarmed with forgiving pity than violent anger. Hilarious yet ineffably poignant, “When Father Was Away on Business” (Times-rated: Family, although there is some casual nudity) ends with one of the screen’s great sequences of reconciliation. With just two films, Emir Kusturica has put his country’s cinema on the map. ‘WHEN FATHER WAS AWAY ON BUSINESS’

A Cannon Group presentation of a Forum-Sarajevo production. Director Emir Kusturica. Screenplay Abdulah Sidran. Camera Vilko Filac. Music Zoran Simjanovic. Production designer Predrag Lukovic. Costumes Divna Jovanovic. Film editor Andrija Zafranovic. With Moreno De Bartoli, Miki Manojlovic, Mirjana Karanovic, Mustafa Nadarevic, Mira Furlan, Predrag Lakovic, Pavle Vujisic, Slobodan Aligrudic, Eva Ras, Aleksandar Dorcev, Emir Hadzihafisbegovic, Zoran Radmilovic, Jelena Covic, Tomislav Gelic. With English subtitles.

Running time: 2 hours, 16 minutes.

Times-rated: Family (some casual nudity).