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His father Mesa (Miki Manojlovic) is a low-level bureaucrat who spends more time womanizing and drinking than attending to his job. A casual remark filled with sarcasm about a political cartoon made to his wife Sena's (Mirjana Karanovic) sister-in-law Ankica (Mira Furlan), leads to his arrest and detention by Zijo (Mustafa Nadarevic), a Communist Party official who also happens to be his wife's brother. Mesa is sent to work in the mines while Sena becomes a seamstress to make ends meet and his sensitive son starts sleepwalking, perhaps a wry metaphor for the status of the people under Marshal Tito. The family does reunite when Mesa is sent to a remote settlement for further resocialization but he does not change his ways and visits prostitutes with the party official in charge of his rehabilitation, using Malik as his escort. In a sub-plot, Malik (who looks and acts more like ten or eleven than six) "falls in love" with a girl about his age who is suffering from a serious blood disorder and their inevitable separation is quite touching. Though family relations are strained, especially between Sena, Zijo, and Ankica, the family is very strong and we know that somehow they will endure. When Father Was Away on Business is perhaps the least daring cinematically of all of Kusturica's works but it is one of the most heartfelt and gained the director his first international success, paving the way for the full maturation of his vision in the brilliant and disturbing Underground. GRADE: B+
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