Northwest Film Forum

With its frequent shifts of point of view and jumbled time frame, Dance in the Rain (Ples v dezju) was one of the first films to introduce to Yugoslavia the new, modernist approaches to cinematic storytelling that were then emerging across Europe. Peter (Miha Baloh), a painter who earns his living as a teacher, thinks back to the years he has wasted personally and artistically. He has grown tired of his affair with a middle-aged actress, Marusa (Dusa Pockaj), who for her part seems determined to go on with the relationship despite her lover’s indifference. The film revolves around a set of recurring scenes and locations—Peter’s shabby bedroom, a well-appointed restaurant, city streets slick from water sprayed by street cleaners—and grows more dreamlike as the couple’s relationship disintegrates. A former assistant to Claude Chabrol, director Bostjan Hladnik returned to his native Slovenia to make this fascinating New Wave-influenced meditation on coming to terms with your own desires.