?Memo? is the feature film debut for Serb Milos Jovanovic but after watching this weak and meandering effort my memo to him is: Don?t bother again.

Set in some geographically unspecific plain in middle Europe it covers the interrelationships of neighbours in a hamlet as wars, Holocaust and political change tear their relationships and the continent apart.

But just as the location is unclear so are the politics which is not advisable for something which hinges on how the little people suffered when the ideologies ran rampant.

The opening scene is typical of the entire film. To the jaunty soundtrack of oboes and accordions a dishevelled man, possibly mad, steals a goose and his grabbed by army men and subjected to water torture at the village pump.

The effect is incongruous and the lurking presence of a ghost who pops up on roofs inspiring evil adds to a surreal effect which diminishes from the impact of what you are seeing.

You wonder if it is the warm up to a macabre comedy. But no there are no laughs here.

By failing to find the right tone the viewer is left remarkably unengaged by any of the characters.

We don?t learn much about Benja Kon whose childhood memories the film is supposed to depict ? other than he is capable of spouting the most pretentious rubbish at any given moment such as: ?People pass by according to the overall schedule but the sky and earth remain.?

Nor do we learn much about his family who suffer as various devious neighbours take advantage of the changing political landscape.

By dealing so heavily in symbolism the film ends up coming over like an unpleasant dream ? confusing and irritating you all night but instantly forgettable the moment you wake.

But this film is far more annoying in that it reduces such a serious subject to such nonsense.

You end up asking yourself how it is possible to watch a film about the Holocaust without being in any way moved.

Occasionally the film captures the flavour of totalitarian regimes such as the gritty scenes depicting endless toil in cold dark factories while apparatchiks spout political rhetoric about the glory of work.

But the realisation that I was thinking ?Hey, that steel-edged canteen table looks authentically Communist,? was a measure of how desperately I was trying to find something to like when the script had left me utterly frustrated.

My final thoughts was that the entire film was a pastiche of similar overwrought European offerings which typically have someone chipping in pretentious nonsense between meaningless scene after meaningless scene. On that level it works perfectly.Saturday, March 19 at BUEI at 4 p.m.

Tuesday, March 22 at Liberty at 6.30 p.m.