Hey Babu Riba

1987
7.7| 1h52m| en
Details

In 1985, four middle-aged Yugoslav emigres return to Belgrade for the funeral of Mariana, their beautiful compatriot. They called her Esther, for Esther Williams, she was the coxswain for their four-man rowing team, and they each loved her. They'd last seen her in 1953, when they rowed her across the Adriatic, pregnant, to join her exiled father in Italy. In flashbacks we learn the story of their youthful baptism into sex, smoking, rock and roll (Hey Ba-ba-re-bop), Hollywood and Swedish films, blue jeans on the black market, and their rivalry with Ristic, the Communist Party youth leader for whom they had instant antipathy.

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Also starring Gala Videnović

Also starring Nebojša Bakočević

Reviews

Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.
Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.
mraculeated The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.
Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
Michael Neumann 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.
jvc1263 One of the most beautiful movies ever made in ex Yu.Story is very familiar to people in ex Yul because generation after war used to live in the same way.People in the west cant imagine how political situation in our country affect people.The plot is in the 50",When Josip Broz Tito said no to the SSSR and politbiro and because of that our borders becomes open for western influence.But,in a country were people didn't had much money jeans was only ideal and friendship was everything.The friendship between for young people an a girl was so strong that after 40 years of their emigration from Yu is still alive.They get together after all this years on Ester"s funeral and they start to remember of their childhood,before their went to the emigration and become successful people.
Pro Jury Although the lead actress is STRIKINGLY beautiful, the plot stands little chance of acceptance because too many distracting details face the audience during the unfolding of the story.One may believe that middle-class teen-age school girls in the 1950's easily gave away their virginity without thought of marriage to 30-year-old's they barely know, but I doubt it.One may believe that young high school teens are highly self-confident and self-assured as they interact with their elders in complex social situations, but my experience has been, more often than not, teenagers feel very awkward and act clumsy as they experiment in the adult world. One may believe that a experienced medical doctor would not know the pungent oder of Stroptomycin -- the smelly fermenting byproduct of busy earth microbes -- and not detect that some lifeless bland powder is fake, but I think not.One may believe that 30-something-year-old troublemakers can enter into, and hang around inside, a public school rec hall during a school social and make trouble, but I think that school socials are traditionally a protected environment and parents, chaparones and school staff would be around to prevent this.One final nit, throughout Hey Babu Riba the five teenage friends referred to themselves as the foursome. There is probably an explanation why the FIVE were the FOURsome, but because it was never detailed, each reference distracts from each scene.This movie did not ring true for me.
Danko-5 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.