Goran just wants to drive his taxi and take care of his blind wife Lina. But people close to him have their own agendas and dreams which threaten his carefree existence. In the idyllic surroundings of snow-covered Gorski Kotar, the fiery personalities of the highlanders surface and collide.

Goran (Franjo Dijak) is a mild-mannered taxi driver in a small Croatian town, with a blind wife. They are expecting their first child together, but he suddenly admits to a passenger that the child is not his. There is an awkward silence in the taxi as the passenger just stares.

It’s the weekend of Goran’s birthday, and he and his wife have decided to gather together with friends and family in the mountains to celebrate.  Just before they are to leave, there’s a bit of uncomfortableness with the presumed father of the baby, and an incredibly sudden and vicious bit of violence occurs (seriously, I gasped). They head off to the cabin anyway, and that kind of sets the tone for the rest of the movie.  Horribleness, and then a grim determination to see this weekend through.

I am being purposeful in my vagueness here, because you should go into this movie as naive as possible about its contents. Goran is the blackest of black comedies, but it does not give so much as a teeny tiny wink for much of its running time.  By the end of this film, mishap has been piled upon mishap and tragedy upon tragedy, and through it all the characters find a way to soldier on and give Goran a great birthday.

Dijak is amazing as Goran, conveying a tremendous range of emotions with the simplest of gestures or the merest of glances.  He is the emotional center of this film, and sometimes the emotion is black-hearted indifference and sometimes it is mouth-agape horror.

Director Nevio Marasovic and writer Gjermund Gisvold start things off slowly (with the exception of that first sudden spike of horror), and some, I’m sure, might think it’s a tad too slow in the first 45 minutes or so.  There is a lot of discussion about family and obligations and traditions and, while it might seem meandering, I think all of these disparate threads do eventually coalesce into a slam-bang finale that does not pause to even breathe.

The desolate winter setting and the lonely cabin provide a chilling (literally, heh) environment for this tale of horror-filled woe.  Yes, it’s a foreign film, so, yes, you have to read along with it. I know that turns off some people, and that’s a damn shame because Goran is very worthy of your attention. Settle in for some very uncomfortable silences and some very outrageous cruelty. Oh, and special kudos to the actors who had to jump out of a hot sauna right into a snowbank. Naked.

Brrrrrr.