By Christopher-Joseph Ravnopolski-Dean
You have picked the wrong film if you expect a banal happy-ending fairy tale from Milcho Manchevski’s Before the Rain (1994, from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, titled Пред дождот [Pred ‘dojdot] in Macedonian Bulgarian). Indeed, in the beginning we are promised a “tale in three parts,” and when we see the mesmerizing Macedonian natural surroundings, we are more than willing to believe the promise is true. Yet, the ensuing events make it impossible for the film to fit such a conventional form. It is still a tale because of the love stories, the sense of magical reality, the illogical and fantastic events, the reminiscences of the middle ages, but its content and construction continuously reveal an unexpectedness unusual for fairy tales.
