In the period of the gradual fall of communist Yugoslavia, Sonja Savić became the “it girl” - she embodied everything modern that could have been offered during those years. She was sexy even though she seemingly did not have what it takes, charming and spontaneous, as well as unbelievably pretentious…
In the year 1984 the film Sugar Water by director Svetislav Bata Prelić from Belgrade just barely made the official program of the Pula film festival. A cheap “no budget” production, characteristic of many achievements of Serbian cinematography from that period, was a romantic comedy about a manly girl in baggy clothes with an oversized nose who is at the brink of her first serious emotional relationship.
Sonja Savić - at that time 23 years old (born in 1961 in Čačak) - conjured up this ugly duckling with some cheap modeling clay on her nose, which did not seem to bother anybody. The fragile, blond actress enchanted viewers, especially towards the end of the story when she rid herself of the fake nose and turned into a beautiful swan. The jury gave her the Golden Arena for Best Leading Actress, and the audience pronounced Sugar Water to be the favorite film, thereby announcing its soon - rather large - box office success.
I have to admit to being caught off-guard by Sonja Savić. At that time I was closely following everything that was being filmed in the former Yugoslavia and I had seen her twice before in lead roles. I quickly forgot the teen melodrama Butterfly Cloud (Leptirov oblak) in which she had made her debut at the age of sixteen, and Mišo Radivojević’s film Living Like the Rest of Us (Živjeti kao sav normalan svijet), for which she was awarded a prize at the Niš Festival of Acting Performances. I barely noticed her as her partner Svetislav Goncić (later they collaborated in Sugar Water) took the spotlight. This new Sonja Savić was someone completely different, self confident, aware that everybody was looking straight at her, even when she was not alone in the scene.
The award from Pula was just a casual recognition of Sonja Savić that year. The main Golden Arena went to a film in which she had also starred, Balkan Spy (Balkanski špijun), although her role was essentially a supporting one (the brunt of the weight was carried by Danilo Bata Stojković, Zvonko Lepetić and Bora Todorović), her scenes possessed a certain straightforwardness which this rigid, masculine film did not.
And Strangler vs. Strangler (Davitelj protiv davitelja)? For a generation that had already mastered the experiences of the new wave in rock and pop music, the esthetics of music videos and new theater tendencies, this film by Slobodan Šijan personified everything modern in contemporary cinematography.
Sonja played a self aware radio host (the daughter of an orthodox priest!), who binds the two homicidal protagonists from different generations. As the director suggested, she designed her own image and it looked really impressive. Sugar Water was nothing! Strangler vs. Strangler was the movie which made every trendsetter commit her name to memory.
Although Mira Furlan was occupying most of the media space intended for screen and stage heroines, Sonja Savić aspired to something far more radical. True, she didn’t have the erotic qualities her rival had - she was skinny, had small breasts and a flat behind - but was completely shameless in front of the camera. The film version of the novel Una by Momo Kapor was announced as the most provocative film in the history of Yugoslav cinematography mostly thanks to the scenes in which she takes her panties off and sits on the toilet or clings to Rade Šerbedžija completely naked.
While Mira Furlan had an established theatrical career and sparkled in the prestigious plays of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, Sonja preferred the alternative. Her idols were the members of the theatrical group Kugla from Zagreb, who she met while studying at the Faculty of Drama Arts in Belgrade, she loved Robert Wilson’s theatre and in Belgrade she had ties to the underground theater Pivar led by Borka Pavičević in the basement. When her colleague Zoran Cvijanić questioned her as to why she didn’t join the established theater Atelje 212 and ask the state for an apartment, she explained that for her even off Broadway was not off enough.
In the period of the gradual fall of communist Yugoslavia, Sonja Savić became the “it girl” - she embodied everything modern that could have been offered during those years. She was sexy even though she seemingly did not have what it takes, charming and spontaneous, as well as unbelievably pretentious. Somebody called her Uma Thurman’s predecessor, and they were not wrong. The problem was that there hadn’t been too many roles that suited her provocative profile. The rock drama Black Maria (Crna Marija), in which she worked with her friends Milan Mladenović and Margita Stefanović from the music band Ekaterina Velika, was a somewhat repulsive film, and she received some comfort from the Venice Film Festival (1985) where she was awarded for Best Supporting Actress in Bora Drašković’s Life Is Beautiful (Život je lep). She did not have to be ashamed of her performance in Condemned (Osuđeni) by Zoran Tadić, but some of her work was clearly just paying her living expenses. Hard to believe, yet in 1988 she starred alongside then completely anonymous Brad Pitt in the film The Dark Side of the Sun (Tamna strana sunca) which took almost ten years to be completed.
When the collapse of Yugoslavia began she had been working on a play by the radical theater group Neue Sloweinsche Kunst, which was performed only a few times. The return to Belgrade under Milošević’s regime signified nothing positive for her because she always claimed that the best things in culture came from Zagreb and Ljubljana. Her generation was either leaving Serbia or dying, and she was spending more and more time in Slovenia, meanwhile only occasionally appearing back home in Serbia on the big screen (in a supporting role in Srđan Dragojević’s We are not angels (Mi nismo Anđeli) and a somewhat bigger part in Goran Marković’s Tragédie burlesque (Urnebesna tragedija).
On the threshold of the new millennium she was pulled back from near-oblivion by a Slovenian director Jan Cvitkovič in another no budget film. In his black and white film debut Bread and Milk (Kruh in mleko) she played the wife of a recovering alcoholic and once again became interesting to the filmmakers of the region. Young Miloš Petrović molded the political art-film South by Southeast (Jug-jugoistok - a paraphrase of Hitchcock’s North by Northwest) around her stylized interpretation; she acted in this film as if it was a silent film by Fritz Lang or Friedrich Willhelm Murnau.
Those kinds of challenges suited her more than the conventions of classical film, and they were hard to come by in contemporary productions. In the new collaboration with Cvitkovič, the tragic-comedy Gravehopping (Od groba do groba) she probably gave the best performance of her career: playing the mute and deaf village freak Ida who in the end gets raped and mutilated by her fellow villagers. Like the character, Sonja was - especially in the final decade of her career - feeling like an outcast whose opinions and gestures were ridiculed by her established colleagues.
Her tendency towards narcotics - which had taken the lives of many of her acquaintances - was no secret. However, the tragedy is that it destroyed her in a period of her life that artists like to call the middle and sometimes the most mature and creative period. (Nenad Polimac, Jutarnji list)