Zagorje region. Several stories revolving around a woman, Anka, who lives in a small village: a girl, Ančica, gets pregnant with a local priest, so she hastily marries the dumb Ruda to cover it up... The Croatian War erupts and several men hide in Zagorje to escape the draft, while war planes can be heard in the sky... Anka is the owner of Beba, a talking pig at her farm, and leads her to a neighboring village to breed with a Serb pig, Rocky, yet when an air raid is heard, the two pigs escape into the forest and get lost. Luckily, Anka meets Beba again at a fair near the church... Despite a feud with Ančica, Anka makes up with her and the locals prepare pig meat. Anka shows Ančica's daughter how Beba got her own piglets.
"Babe" meets "My Sweet Little Village"—unusual surreal comedy "Even Pigs Go to Heaven" (original title: "She wore a red headscarf") about a woman and a talking pig does not even bother to conjure up a real plot, and is instead a loose collection of comical episodes and vignettes that all give a homage to the Zagorje region, neatly depicting their childish mentality and specific customs. Shrill director Goran Dukic ("Mirta Learns Statistics") crafts a wacky film that is not for everyone's taste, yet it has just enough style and sympathetic characters to sway the viewers: from the opening scenes where a man with a bucket splashes the statue of Tito to wash it, through daft dialogues ("Do you think the late Ruža is watching all of this right now from above?" - "Of course! She is dead, she is not blind!"; "If she drowned, I'll kill her!"), up to the bizarre idea of occasional black and yellow animation clips, and even Jesus on the Crucifix as the narrator (!), the movie has personality. Natasa Dorcic is great as Anka, who lovingly talks to her pet pig Beba, and their interactions and dialogues (for instance, when Beba hears about Virgin Mary giving birth, and assumes it was done through artificial insemination) are the highlight of the film. The funniest joke is when the women are having a party outside, in the backyard of the farm, and then even chickens start talking while observing them: "Have they gone crazy?" - "Let them! It's better they sing than that they... fry!" The chaotic narrative where certain subplots just come and go, and basically everything just stays the same, has its shortcomings, yet the film has an overall such a contagious tone at times that one is willing to forgive its flaws to enjoy in its virtues.
Grade:++
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