Dragoljub Popović

In 1985, four middle-aged Yugoslav emigres return to Belgrade for the funeral of Mariana, their beautiful compatriot. They called her Esther, for Esther Williams, she was the coxswain for their four-man rowing team, and they each loved her. They'd last seen her in 1953, when they rowed her across the Adriatic, pregnant, to join her exiled father in Italy. In flashbacks we learn the story of their youthful baptism into sex, smoking, rock and roll (Hey Ba-ba-re-bop), Hollywood and Swedish films, blue jeans on the black market, and their rivalry with Ristic, the Communist Party youth leader for whom they had instant antipathy.

Traveling salesman in a small town before WW2 makes a solemn promise to kill himself. Later he finds that the local people took him very seriously.

The plot is focused around three women in an old tavern, famous for its jukebox that was left over to the landlady by her husband when he went on a trip from which he never returned. There is also a spinster-turned-alcoholic because her fiance left her, as well as a young waitress who is waiting for her own fiance but has the impression that she will remain alone like these two. Various new men enter their lives, and in many different ways they destroy the memory of those who left them or contributed to their situation.