Search - Spare Parts on DVD

True sleeper film with highest regards-Dardenne Brothers fan

crash worship | Bay Area, Ca | 02/18/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"First off, this is a "film movement" movie. I wouldn't have known about it except that when I was unemployed I went to the library to get dvd's. After awhile I started to look for any dvd that was released from this dvd release club. The movies are from all around the world and they are mostly much better than average.

"Spare parts" stands out in my mind because it blends the geography, economics, and history of Slovenia to give this story momentum forward in a naturalistic manner. The characters have a life of their own much like what the Dardenne brothers are doing with their own movies. Had a large distributer picked this movie up it would have become an arthouse favorite.

If you liked "Rosetta," "The Promise," "The Child," and /or "The Son" then you will certainly enjoy this film.


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The cost of doing business . . .

Ronald Scheer | Los Angeles | 10/08/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This downbeat film from Slovenia follows the lives of two men who illegally transport third-world refugees across the border into Italy. Set against the noisy excitement of motorcycle racing and the ominous presence of a huge nuclear power complex, the danger of their own illicit work takes on a kind of dreary routine, in which death and misfortune become simply part of the cost of doing business. Lost and without a future, Ludvik has only his past glory as a racing champion to give his life some meaning. Meanwhile, mourning the loss of a young wife who has died of cancer, he chain smokes and drinks himself regularly into oblivion.

His young assistant, Rudi, is a novice at this kind of self-obliteration, objecting at first to the callousness of the men who transport the refugees and appalled when he learns of the fate that awaits many of them. But as the film progresses, he too surrenders to the mind-numbing conditions of his line of work - an occupation that has ironically sprung into being with the birth of the European Union. At the end of the film, Ludvik ruefully observes that Hitler also attempted to create a unified Europe, though he went to "extremes," but this trafficking in humans is no different in its effect - the death of the soul."