(NOTE: The following review will contain minor spoilers necessary solely for the discussion of plot and/or characters. If you’re the type of reader who prefers a review entirely spoiler-free, then I’d encourage you to skip down to the last few paragraphs for the final assessment. If, however, you’re accepting of a few modest hints at ‘things to come,’ then read on …)
From the film’s IMDB.com page citation:
“While traveling for business, Miro spends the night with a sex worker for the first time in his life after someone sends her to his hotel room. After they've had sex, he finds the girl dead in the bathroom. A successful, happily married man and a father of two, Miro covers up the unfortunate accident with the help of two hotel employees. However, they soon start asking him to return the favor. At first, it's small things but soon their demands get out of hand. The two accomplices in his "crime" suddenly play a major role in his life that will never be the same.”
Unlike a great many others who like to think deeply about film, I tend to ‘go with my gut’ when it comes to deciphering the central message intended by the storytelling.
Oh, this isn’t to suggest that I’m not prone to discuss the highs and lows of any particular feature because any regular or casual reader of SciFiHistory.Net will tell you there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary. My point is that – much like Forrest Gump – I consider myself a ‘simple man,’ and I prefer to have any production’s ‘moral to the story’ being accessible minimally in the big finish. When I have to putter about and try to discern the greater meaning from any yarn, then I’m usually a bit put off by the exercise, thinking it (to a small degree) beneath a truly great story. While I’m okay with academics and film historians expounding upon what a project might mean for its time and place, I’d still rather come away from the last reel having learned what I was to make of it all. If not, then what really was all of this fuss about?
Still, stories plumbing the depths of the human soul do tend to be a bit more complex, so I’m not sure that there are any easy answers to writer/director Lukas Nola’s Escort (2023). Some of this is owed to the fact that, yes, matters of personal behavior when measured against the backdrop of a wider society – one that in itself might defy easy definition or categorization – are not easily forced into any critical formula: where I see a flawed man trying to regardless of circumstance make a good decision, you might see an opportunist who has embraced bad decisions while still trying to maintain some small amount of humanity. Each of us is free to use our respective filters to define good and bad, and it’s this reality that leaves me a bit flummoxed when trying to determine if Miro (as played by Zivko Anocic) has a moral core or not.
From the film’s IMDB.com page citation:
“While traveling for business, Miro spends the night with a sex worker for the first time in his life after someone sends her to his hotel room. After they've had sex, he finds the girl dead in the bathroom. A successful, happily married man and a father of two, Miro covers up the unfortunate accident with the help of two hotel employees. However, they soon start asking him to return the favor. At first, it's small things but soon their demands get out of hand. The two accomplices in his "crime" suddenly play a major role in his life that will never be the same.”
Unlike a great many others who like to think deeply about film, I tend to ‘go with my gut’ when it comes to deciphering the central message intended by the storytelling.
Oh, this isn’t to suggest that I’m not prone to discuss the highs and lows of any particular feature because any regular or casual reader of SciFiHistory.Net will tell you there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary. My point is that – much like Forrest Gump – I consider myself a ‘simple man,’ and I prefer to have any production’s ‘moral to the story’ being accessible minimally in the big finish. When I have to putter about and try to discern the greater meaning from any yarn, then I’m usually a bit put off by the exercise, thinking it (to a small degree) beneath a truly great story. While I’m okay with academics and film historians expounding upon what a project might mean for its time and place, I’d still rather come away from the last reel having learned what I was to make of it all. If not, then what really was all of this fuss about?
Still, stories plumbing the depths of the human soul do tend to be a bit more complex, so I’m not sure that there are any easy answers to writer/director Lukas Nola’s Escort (2023). Some of this is owed to the fact that, yes, matters of personal behavior when measured against the backdrop of a wider society – one that in itself might defy easy definition or categorization – are not easily forced into any critical formula: where I see a flawed man trying to regardless of circumstance make a good decision, you might see an opportunist who has embraced bad decisions while still trying to maintain some small amount of humanity. Each of us is free to use our respective filters to define good and bad, and it’s this reality that leaves me a bit flummoxed when trying to determine if Miro (as played by Zivko Anocic) has a moral core or not.
In order to start this journey, I think it’s important to take Nola at his word. The packaging for this release of Escort includes a director’s statement that he obviously felt necessary to convey his state of mind in delivering such a curious project to audiences; and I’m going to reproduce it below as I think it’s highly relevant: “Arrogance, primitivism, and violence – of the institutional, political, economic, religious, and cultural kind – they dominate the society and determine almost all of its rules. This dominance is not always loud and obvious; often it’s covert and almost imperceptible. But it’s there. The powerlessness of the people around me and my own is deeply frustrating. My anger at myself for having accepted this situation has driven me to write and film this story.”
Alas, I don’t know a great deal about this auteur. I did a bit of searching online, and I’ve been able to learn that – though he’s recently passed at the far too young age of 58 – he was somewhat highly regarded by those in the European film community. A website from his native Croatia suggests that Nola struggled with cancer for some time, and some of this leads me to suspect that he knew his days were limited when he went about making Escort, perhaps even knowing it would be his final film. As such (and along with the above statement), I believe he wanted to look at the project as making a statement about the world he saw while he was in it. While that’s about as admirable as one can surmise, the storyteller still made a curious choice that I think ultimately confuses what he was trying to say about film as an art form … and, yes, I strongly believe he was trying to say something by incorporating this weird experimental technique in the picture’s last reel.
We’ll get to that …
Seemingly on top of the world, Miro – an advertising executive with a knack for knowing what’s needed to sell anything – meets up with a few colleagues while travelling on business. The trio spend the better night of the evening in a hotel bar, drinking and drugging and generally carousing with one another. As men are wont to do, they challenge (verbally) one another about their respective personal and professional choices in life, leaving Miro to realize that – of this small pack – he’s largely the best behaved when it comes to straying outside the marriage. Eventually, the bar closes, and Miro makes his way back to his hotel room, looking for a good night of sleep before heading back home in the morning.
Not long after, there comes a knock at his door. To his surprise, a beautiful blonde escort – Maja (Lena Medar) – enters, and she explains that she’s been booked for the night – all paid in advance, no questions asked. Over the course of a few minutes, Miro cautiously engages with her, lowering his guard as her advances grow more and more sensual. Eventually, the two are inseparable, and they while away the hours rutting about in every conceivable fashion known to either of them. It’s a night of uninhibited sexual indulgence that’s theatrical glorious in every detail.
But in the wee small hours of the morning, Miro rises to use the bathroom, and he’s aghast to find Maja dead on the floor of his hotel room shower. Unable to get an outside line or any answer from the front desk, he rushes downstairs and confronts the clerk – Belc (Kresimir Mikic) – for assistance. Eventually, the hotelier makes a phone call, calms his guest with a reassuring voice, and goes to examine the room for verification and details. Over the course of the next hour or so, Miro comes to learn that Belc and his friend Berak (Igor Kovac) have no intention on involving the authorities; rather, they politely dispose of the body, remove all of the evidence of Maja’s presence, and request a small fee in exchange for their troubles. Still somewhat distraught, Miro finally concedes; and he heads for home.
Alas, I don’t know a great deal about this auteur. I did a bit of searching online, and I’ve been able to learn that – though he’s recently passed at the far too young age of 58 – he was somewhat highly regarded by those in the European film community. A website from his native Croatia suggests that Nola struggled with cancer for some time, and some of this leads me to suspect that he knew his days were limited when he went about making Escort, perhaps even knowing it would be his final film. As such (and along with the above statement), I believe he wanted to look at the project as making a statement about the world he saw while he was in it. While that’s about as admirable as one can surmise, the storyteller still made a curious choice that I think ultimately confuses what he was trying to say about film as an art form … and, yes, I strongly believe he was trying to say something by incorporating this weird experimental technique in the picture’s last reel.
We’ll get to that …
Seemingly on top of the world, Miro – an advertising executive with a knack for knowing what’s needed to sell anything – meets up with a few colleagues while travelling on business. The trio spend the better night of the evening in a hotel bar, drinking and drugging and generally carousing with one another. As men are wont to do, they challenge (verbally) one another about their respective personal and professional choices in life, leaving Miro to realize that – of this small pack – he’s largely the best behaved when it comes to straying outside the marriage. Eventually, the bar closes, and Miro makes his way back to his hotel room, looking for a good night of sleep before heading back home in the morning.
Not long after, there comes a knock at his door. To his surprise, a beautiful blonde escort – Maja (Lena Medar) – enters, and she explains that she’s been booked for the night – all paid in advance, no questions asked. Over the course of a few minutes, Miro cautiously engages with her, lowering his guard as her advances grow more and more sensual. Eventually, the two are inseparable, and they while away the hours rutting about in every conceivable fashion known to either of them. It’s a night of uninhibited sexual indulgence that’s theatrical glorious in every detail.
But in the wee small hours of the morning, Miro rises to use the bathroom, and he’s aghast to find Maja dead on the floor of his hotel room shower. Unable to get an outside line or any answer from the front desk, he rushes downstairs and confronts the clerk – Belc (Kresimir Mikic) – for assistance. Eventually, the hotelier makes a phone call, calms his guest with a reassuring voice, and goes to examine the room for verification and details. Over the course of the next hour or so, Miro comes to learn that Belc and his friend Berak (Igor Kovac) have no intention on involving the authorities; rather, they politely dispose of the body, remove all of the evidence of Maja’s presence, and request a small fee in exchange for their troubles. Still somewhat distraught, Miro finally concedes; and he heads for home.
From this point onward, Escort evolves into a cautionary parable about wealth and responsibility. Now that Belc and Berak have knowledge they can use to softly blackmail Miro for favors and money, they keep coming back again and again, softly implying that their petty demands are more about establishing a friendship than authentic extortion. Though this successful executive initially goes along with their schemes, he inevitably realizes that they’re using him to benefit from a mistake they were all involved with, and he tries to put a stop to it. Without revealing too many of the particulars (I don’t like spoiling some of the finer points), things do escalate to the point wherein lives are threatened, yet Miro does halt a bout of torture set into motion by his friends who originally hired the escort because they feel somewhat responsible for the whole affair to begin with.
Where Escort derails as a film – and derails significantly – is director Nola – for reasons I can’t even begin to fathom – decided to render a large portion of the conclusion essentially in TikTok mode: the camera lens is a tight, upright frame centered entirely in the middle of the screen, thus turning a major motion picture into an Internet reel. Initially, I thought this was a bit of narrative trickery set up to give the impression that Miro was going about getting video evidence – or perhaps Belc and Berak were doing the same, it’s entirely unclear whose perspective this is supposed to be – in the event that the circumstances worsened. But as this unconventional angle never relents from being the province of the director (meaning ‘the storyteller’), it’s ultimately Nola’s view … and it’s an utterly, utterly confusing and unnecessary choice for an otherwise stellar character study.
Were I pressed to define what its inclusion was all about, I can only harken back to Nola’s own words, that being his anger and/or shame at feeling complicit in the aforementioned “arrogance, primitivism, and violence” that pervades Croatian society and, more likely, the world at large. He intersperses scenes of nature throughout all of Escort – shots of birds, mice, and other general wildlife are shot in monochromatic fashion – and there’s an almost black-and-white quality to the rest of the cinematography. (For clarity’s sake, it isn’t black-and-white colors, but it has the same texture given that so many of the scenes are rendered with a limited palate.) Because he willfully and deliberately chose to shoot part of his finale in the style, I can only assume that he was either indicting an entire society that chooses to live-and-die by social media, or he was demonstrating that his perspective – that we’re all dominated by forces we accept as the status quo – was far more pervasive than just solely his.
Again, it’s a confusing choice … and I really don’t know what to make of it more than that.
Where Escort derails as a film – and derails significantly – is director Nola – for reasons I can’t even begin to fathom – decided to render a large portion of the conclusion essentially in TikTok mode: the camera lens is a tight, upright frame centered entirely in the middle of the screen, thus turning a major motion picture into an Internet reel. Initially, I thought this was a bit of narrative trickery set up to give the impression that Miro was going about getting video evidence – or perhaps Belc and Berak were doing the same, it’s entirely unclear whose perspective this is supposed to be – in the event that the circumstances worsened. But as this unconventional angle never relents from being the province of the director (meaning ‘the storyteller’), it’s ultimately Nola’s view … and it’s an utterly, utterly confusing and unnecessary choice for an otherwise stellar character study.
Were I pressed to define what its inclusion was all about, I can only harken back to Nola’s own words, that being his anger and/or shame at feeling complicit in the aforementioned “arrogance, primitivism, and violence” that pervades Croatian society and, more likely, the world at large. He intersperses scenes of nature throughout all of Escort – shots of birds, mice, and other general wildlife are shot in monochromatic fashion – and there’s an almost black-and-white quality to the rest of the cinematography. (For clarity’s sake, it isn’t black-and-white colors, but it has the same texture given that so many of the scenes are rendered with a limited palate.) Because he willfully and deliberately chose to shoot part of his finale in the style, I can only assume that he was either indicting an entire society that chooses to live-and-die by social media, or he was demonstrating that his perspective – that we’re all dominated by forces we accept as the status quo – was far more pervasive than just solely his.
Again, it’s a confusing choice … and I really don’t know what to make of it more than that.
Tonally, Escort feels like it was intended to be a neo-noir – a sub-genre of storytelling that I have a fondness for, and I cover in this space because I like it so much – but at other moments the mild shenanigans of Miro, Belc, and Berak resonate more as a dark comedy. When it’s hard to determine whether or not anyone is in serious jeopardy, that’s typically how I see things. Once Belc is shown dancing in the arms of Miro’s wife Darija (Hrvojka Begovic) with the husband powerless to do anything about it, the film finally feels downright sinister if not dreamlike in the same way director David Lynch spins dark fairy tales so vividly … but when everyone leaves and no harm is done I’m still amiss over what Nola truly wanted me to think.
Escort (2023) was produced by Kinorama, Buka Production, and Skopje Film Studio. DVD distribution (for this particular release) was coordinated by the fine folks at Indie Pix. As for the technical specifications? Wow. While I’m no trained video expert, I was captivated by a good portion of the provided sights-and-sounds in this: as I said above, it has this noirish quality that only disappears in the controversial portion of the ending, and I think Nola’s work is definitely owed for more study. Lastly, if you’re looking for special features? Alas, this was a bare bones DVD I received, and I definitely would’ve liked to know a bit more.
Recommended.
I’m conflicted with Escort (2023). There was so very much in here that I absolutely loved, but the conclusion truly twists an otherwise great film into something that smacks of experimentation that was entirely excessive and problematic. Honestly, it was the kind of trickery one might expect from a film student and not an accomplished storyteller, evoking more confusion than anything intelligent so far as I care. While I won’t spoil the last scene, either, I’d still argue that the writer/director kinda/sorta copped out on what could’ve been a signature piece deserving of broad praise. As it is? It’s just … there. And disappointing.
In the interests of fairness, I’m pleased to disclose that the fine folks at Indie Pix provided me with a complimentary DVD of Escort (2023) by request for the expressed purpose of completing this review. Their contribution to me in no way, shape, or form influenced my opinion of it.
-- EZ
Escort (2023) was produced by Kinorama, Buka Production, and Skopje Film Studio. DVD distribution (for this particular release) was coordinated by the fine folks at Indie Pix. As for the technical specifications? Wow. While I’m no trained video expert, I was captivated by a good portion of the provided sights-and-sounds in this: as I said above, it has this noirish quality that only disappears in the controversial portion of the ending, and I think Nola’s work is definitely owed for more study. Lastly, if you’re looking for special features? Alas, this was a bare bones DVD I received, and I definitely would’ve liked to know a bit more.
Recommended.
I’m conflicted with Escort (2023). There was so very much in here that I absolutely loved, but the conclusion truly twists an otherwise great film into something that smacks of experimentation that was entirely excessive and problematic. Honestly, it was the kind of trickery one might expect from a film student and not an accomplished storyteller, evoking more confusion than anything intelligent so far as I care. While I won’t spoil the last scene, either, I’d still argue that the writer/director kinda/sorta copped out on what could’ve been a signature piece deserving of broad praise. As it is? It’s just … there. And disappointing.
In the interests of fairness, I’m pleased to disclose that the fine folks at Indie Pix provided me with a complimentary DVD of Escort (2023) by request for the expressed purpose of completing this review. Their contribution to me in no way, shape, or form influenced my opinion of it.
-- EZ
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