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Love

The title may strike you as inappropriate for a gritty drama about a multinational cast of characters plying various illegal trades in the outskirts of Manhattan. Even worse, you might assume it to be ironic if you read any of the numerous reviews that compare it to Pulp Fiction for its multiple perspectives and looping time line.

But Love is, in fact, about that emotion, albeit in unconventional forms. This second feature from Vladan Nikolic, formerly director of an independent television network in Belgrade and now a professor of film in New York City, draws on his own status as an immigrant to America in shaping his various characters’ experiences with assimilation and the lack thereof. More universally, though, his film’s theme is the often noble emotions that give rise to some of the worst human actions.

The central character is Vanya (Sergej Trifunovic), a rare instance of a true Yugoslav: Abandoned by his parents after birth and raised in an orphanage, he has no idea if he is a Serb, Croat or Muslim. His love of country turns sour during the civil war, where he served as a special forces soldier. He takes advantage of an opportunity to escape to the United States, but there is a price: His patron requires him to work as an assassin.

Love radiates outward from him to encompass a German doctor whose humanitarian dedication met its match in witnessing Serbian atrocities; an American cop who wants to be a writer but feels tied to the heritage of his father; a French drag artiste whose entire life is a fabrication; an Italian gangster desperate to save the life of his critically ill wife, and others. At some point after we have been visually introduced to each character, a narrator provides us with his or her background information, giving a pithy sketch that often runs counter to our expectations: One of the nastier characters, for instance, has a secret fondness for Mexican soap operas.

Some reviewers (usually the same ones who compare it to Tarantino) have criticized Love for favoring visual style and structural virtuosity over emotion. Yet despite a framing device that seems designed to distance us from the characters, they had a way of getting under my skin anyway. The story’s twists and turns are actually its weakest elements: Revisiting the same events from multiple perspectives adds little to anything but the film’s length. But Nikolic has a keen eye for locations, and his placement of his multinational cast in Manhattan but not of it renders another unexpected layer of emotion.

Love will be screened next Wednesday and Thursday at the Emerging Cinemas screen at the Market Arcade Film and Arts Center.