Anecdotes :
Regarding the music, Emir Kusturica says : "what we obtain at the end is a kind of mixture between the traditional music and the cuban "sound", a world music impossible to identify precisely, in a word : free. Nothing more normal finally, since the music is the synthesis of all the other." The gypsy soul is present indeed in this music of a disrespectful freedom.
Working title of the film was Acrobatic Music, and if you look closely at the generic, there is no title ! Just the silhouette of a pair of cats...
" Your parents are watching you from above " " They can't see anything. It's cloudy "
"I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship..."
The burlesque of the film is partly inspired by the comic strip Alan Ford, of Italian origin, but having had a strong success in Yugoslavia in the Eighties. Alan Ford is a loosy publicity agent who becomes a secret agent ; sort of James Bond parody, his adventures are quite delirious. See Alan Ford online (bosnian site) or the Belgrade Alan Ford page.
We even see in Dadan's limousine one of his friends who reads an Alan Ford comic book while the other play dices...
There is a restaurant named Black Cat White Cat in St Petersbourg, in Russia. As we can imagine, it is a restaurant specialised in serbian food. A giant screen behind the bar shows russian or yugoslav films, among which of course, Emir Kusturica's film. A local journalist underlines the plates are quite good...
Black Cat White Cat (Chyornaya Koshka Bely Kot) 13, Pestelya Ulitsa. Tel: 276 7430.
Meal for 2, with wine : 1,020 roubles (30 euros).
In the movie Darwin's nightmare by Hubert Sauper, we can see several scenes from the film Black Cat White Cat on a black & white television with the Russians in Tanzania. They stop their conversation and say laughing : "look : it's our people on TV".
Critics :
- Télérama.
"Emir Kusturica comes back to gypsies, for an optimistic and truculent joke... With married and brass band, odds and ends and herd of geese."
- Monsieur Cinéma.
"The comic attitude splashes everything, even the music. It is enough to see how Kusturica definitively ridicules techno music and shows his great tenderness for a gypsy musicians formation. A great director is back, his film is an homage to burlesque, life and love... Cheers ! "
- courrier des Balkans : "The time of the bear, lions and palms hunting is behind him. Now, he can have fun and shoot films. It possible that this film be the first of a new career (splendid), less turned towards festivals successes and more dedicated to an aesthetic and hedonist manner to make films. "
Posters :
>>> watch the trailer (French language)
