When she was 19, Lidija from Kaštela accepted a shady job of a waitress in Amsterdam, but once there, she was among the 15 girls who discovered they were held captive by the mafia to work as prostitutes in a Red Light district. Lidija taught herself how to speak Dutch, cotacted a police officer and was freed. However, she stayed in Amsterdam for over a decade, working in porn movies. After she could not renew her visa, she came back to Croatia to announce she works as a porn actress, yet only received offers for third-class movies. Lidija visited her mother and sister Jasminka, and had several relationships with men, including a former drug addict living in a farm. Lidija finally gets pregnant at 37, but her lover refuses to accept the legitimacy of the child.
Sometimes it suffices just to find a person who experiences an incredible life story to make an interesting documentary. One such case is Dana Budisavljevic's "Easy A" that just follows Lidija Sunjerga, a woman whose life is so insane that it is fascinating: more plot twists and surprises happen to her than in 10 soap operas. For one, even though she was the victim of human trafficking and forced prostitution in Amsterdam, after being released she decided to continue with such a branch and made several porn movies, before returning to Croatia. For other, she had a lot of problems trying to blend back in the conservative Dalmatian mentality. However, she is a very intelligent person and always acts as if she is in a life adventure, which makes all these stories perplexing and even a bit comical. Archive footage is used from her AV movies up to her appearance in the Željko Malnar TV show, where she bravely publicly announced she is a porn star, hoping to attract directors to make movies, only to be disappointed that Croatia doesn't have any professional AV industry. Other details are amusing as well (the address of her family's house is "Path of Graveyard"; she argues her deceased dad beat her and that she escaped because of that, while her sister claims he only beat her because she was disrespectful and "didn't listen"; her mother adds how "nicotine saved her sanity"; Lidija saying she is only "occasionally infatuated" with a guy...), and a lot of random stuff happens out of nowhere, just like in real life, as even Budisavljevic joked how she was struggling as to when to end the movie, because insane events just kept happening to Lidija, even after the filming was completed. It's as if Lidija is a magnet for compelling events. "Easy A" is more of a silent observer of how sometimes life directs its own movie.
Grade:+++
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