Before the Rain

Milcho Manchevski’s triptych tales of brutality in the Balkans shared the Golden Lion at the 51st Venice International Film Festival with Tsai Ming-liang’s Vive L'Amour. Divided into three stories, all of which focus on tragic and ill-fated love affairs, 1994's Before the Rain invites the audience to question the circular nature of violence. Manchevski doesn’t attempt to explain events in 1991 that led to the break-up of Yugoslavia after the Soviet Union fell apart, instead he eschews conventional analysis and alludes to the universality of violence; most noticeably in the film’s second installment in London where the threat of the IRA connotes the ubiquitous presence of cruelty.