Emir Kusturica's second feature film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, the first of two victories for the Bosnian director. The film deals with the time in Yugoslavia where Tito started to distance himself from the Russians and Stalin. It looks at a family of a party worker, Mesa, in 1948 who finds that one politically incorrect comment condemns him to "voluntary work" in the mines and exile from Sarajevo. This is all seen through the eyes of his son, Malik, who is six years old and starting to see the world of adults for what it is. Malik's greatest desire is to buy a football to ape the success of the Yugoslav national team but when he finally earns the money his brother makes him give it to his mother so the family can survive having lost its breadwinner.

Mesa's crime is hardly known to him until he has returned from exile and the political wind changes again. Here he finds himself in the ascendancy as the "communists" who exiled him are now pariahs for the new Yugoslav democracy. Mesa takes their apologies and takes back his mistress from them. Malik sees this and realises that his father has not changed. The adult politics merely go on as before.

This probably makes the film sound political but that is not the case. The victims of the political purges are not saints although their plight is presented sympathetically. Mesa gets into trouble because he takes a mistress who switches her attentions to his brother-in-law, a local party boss. This doesn't stop his infidelity as he whores around and even re-takes his mistress at the end more from revenge than any other reason. Similarly, his brother-in-law's coldness and ruthlessness leads to later unhappiness and grief for him. No the real evil in the film is the switching loyalties of the political leaders and the effect this had on ordinary lives. This is the great strength of the film - that it asks you to care about its folk rather than the politics.

The cast are excellent and although this is a neo-realist piece it shows flashes of the magical realism that was to come with Kusturica. The scenes of Malik's sleepwalking are wonderfully done balancing humour and danger. Kusturica keeps a very real tone throughout and employs some long takes to build up the character's anxiety and disturb the viewer. He also seems to have a message that even though one character says "who can love in this madhouse" that family, love and play are all we really want. A message which was to come out in his more ebullient later films. The fine music from Zoran Simjanovic is redolent of Zbigniew Preisner's work for Krzystof Kieslowski.

When Father Was Away On Business is a fine film making from a humanist perspective. It creates a very effective setting and tells a tale of iniquities and growing up. It is moving, witty and a welcome retreat from political films.