Meet Me in Montenegro

Despite the fact that it jogs by on something of rom-com-cliche treadmill for much of its running time, Alex Holdridge’s autobiographical, lovesick travelogue about a struggling filmmaker who unexpectedly reunites with the one that got away is an emotionally honest portrait of artistic insecurity and a realistic depiction of the always befuddling road to true romance. Holdridge, the director of 2007’s Independent Spirit Award-winning In Search of a Midnight Kiss, and Saasen (Montenegro’s co-writer, -director, and -editor) play Anderson and Lina. (Holdridge and Sassen are also a couple in real life.) In a voiceover prologue, Anderson recounts how they met cute on a train seven years earlier and impetuously decided to travel to the scenic Balkan seaside for what he believed was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Instead, after a few days of sunny, smiley sensuality, Lina, a Norwegian dancer, vanishes, leaving Anderson only a brief note and a shattered heart. (Shades of everything from Casablanca to Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise reverberate throughout, with a side of Woody Allen-esque neurotic menschiness thrown in for good measure.)

Cut to the present and Anderson is on his way to Berlin to pitch an actor on his newest script – a big-budget, action-oriented project improbably titled Supercollider. Fate, kismet, or just plain plot necessity – and again, this entire film is autobiographical – reconvenes the romance with Lina, who just happens to be visiting Berlin as well, and much navel-gazing on the subject of work vs. love follows. The eventual outcome of all this hesitant, wounded heart-play is never truly in doubt. Montenegro shall rise again, and an unnecessary but intriguing subplot involving the floundering interpersonal issues between Anderson’s Brit-in-Berlin pal Stephen (Friend) and his girlfriend Friederike (Ulrich) seems tacked on, mainly to give Anderson a sounding board for his own problems with Lina.

I would have been more than tickled if Holdridge had chosen to merge his true-life love story with the fictional Supercollider and retitled the whole shebang Destination: CERN!, but, as Anderson finally realizes come film’s end: You can’t have everything. Or can you? Director of photography Robert Murphy deserves a Spirit Award of his own for his breathtaking and evocative lensing of ever-cinematic Berlin and Montenegro, and Stephen Coates’ melancholic score is equally suited to the story at hand. It’s a story we’ve seen before, in countless cinematic iterations, but there’s no denying that Holdridge and Saasen’s hearts are in the right place … although I’d still like to see Holdridge tackle that fictional Supercollider film at some point in the future.