The Beauty of Sin (1986), which stands out by its critical acclaim and popular success both in Yugoslavia and abroad, begins with tragedy. The film prologue, shot with documentarist precision, shows a distressed woman dressed in traditional folkloric clothes, sometime in the past, in the rocky mountains of Montenegro, facing her returning husband, who discovers her adultery. While her lover escapes, she admits to her husband that she »has sinned«. Then, knowing what destiny befalls her, she starts silently baking a flat loaf of bread. After she removes her wedding ring, she hands a mallet to her husband, as they climb the steep mountains. Once on the top of one of the hills, she places the loaf on her head and her husband murders her by hitting her 'breaded head' with the mallet.

This prologue, shot with an ethnographer's gaze and an ironic distance, is simultaneously the director's commentary on the traditional ritual of punishing adulterous women in the rural Balkan areas. His gender strategy is revelatory in his portrayal of rural male and female characters. The director reveals, most prominently in The Beauty of Sin, the cinematic mechanisms of gaze: while men's eyes are spared physical obstacles and are free to look and see/know, they remain victims of their own voyeuristic and objectifying desires, and prisoners of the traditional norms and patriarchal confines imposed on both them and their wives. In spite of being endowed with physical sight, they fail to see and, therefore, are incapable of knowing the world before their eyes. Women, on the other hand, additionally to their symbolic subordination, are physically confined and abused by the rules that do not permit them to physically see, or by imposing on them physically unbearable working conditions that impair their eye sight. Combining both female and male gaze, the director equates the act of seeing with knowing. A clear instance of the directorial omniscient gaze, its originality lies, however, not only in its equal representation of the female and male biological sex, but also in its subversion of the director's omniscient gaze, when it is subtly transferred to – the female protagonist (Jaglika). When she removes the veil over her eyes, she starts to daringly touch and caress her husband's body. Luka (her husband) is shocked by such 'disgraceful' behaviour and shuns sexual intercourse »with such devilish woman«. Jaglika decides to stop making love to Luka, unless she can see his body, her body, their faces.

Female sexuality evokes male desire and subsequent punishment for the transgression, as The Beauty of Sin conveys this in its very title. Through his cinematic representation and psychologically complex portrayal of female transgressivity, Nikolić most effectively subverts the perspective of the male gaze, focused on the woman as spectacle, and asserts that the emancipatory process of local, and by extension of all rural patriarchal women, must begin with their sexual self-discovery, which might lead to social, political and ontological female liberation.

This female gaze can easily be misunderstood by the male viewer and it has been misinterpreted by the fetishising desires of male critics¹⁷. Such interpretations reiterate the established patriarchal norms of 'female chastity' and recycle the myth of the »eternal feminine«. The female viewer may, however, more easily become involved in the process of partial or complete spectatorial identification with the heroine's liberatory pleasure. This moment of liberation for her alters the relationship of power in the representation. Her return of the gaze transforms her feelings from shame to rebellion against both the local patriarchy and the foreign colonising look, signalling a disruption in the traditional narrative.

Repeating the same shots of the prologue in its cyclical structure, the closing scenes of The Beauty of Sin show Luka climbing the mountain with Jaglika to the site of the punishment for her transgressive behaviour. But as he lifts his mallet, he seems to have changed his mind and returns to the house. A gunshot is heard, as Luka takes his own life instead of Jaglika's. With such tragic ending, the film shows both men and women as victims of the double standards of patriarchy. By killing the man, Nikolić does not punish only his male character, but traditional morality, denouncing the patriarchal society and its myths.

References

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Haraway, Donna. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge.

Haskell, Molly. 1987. From Reverence to Rape: the Treatment of Women in the Movies. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

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Rivière, Joan. 1986. "Womanliness as a masquerade." In Formations of Fantasy, eds. V. Burgin, J. Donald & C. Kaplan. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 35-44.

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Sellier, Geneviève. 2005. La Nouvelle vague: un cinéma au masculine singulier. Paris: CNRS Editions.

Slapšak, Svetlana. 2000. »Žensko telo u jugoslovenskom filmu: status žene, paradigma feminizma.« In Žene, slike, izmišljaji, ed. Branka Arsić. Beograd: Centar za ženske studije, pp. 121-137.

---. 2002. "Idenitities Under Threat on the Eastern Borders" "Identities Under Threat on the Eastern Borders." In Thinking Differently: A Reader in European Women's Studies, eds. G. Griffin and R. Braidotti. London & New York: Zed Books, pp. 145-158.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1987. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. London: Routledge

Filmography

Petrijin venac (Petrija's Wreath). 1980.
Directed by Srdjan Karanovic. Centar Film.

Nešto izmedju (Something In-Between). 1982.
Directed by Srdjan Karanovic. Centar Film.

Lepota poroka (The Beauty of Sin). 1986.
Directed by Zivko Nikolic. Centar Film.

Maja BOGOJEVIĆ