Girls On Film

Croatia's number one export Severina is diversifying her portfolio. More precisely, she's spent the autumn on stage in Miroslav Krleža's classic of Croatian drama, Gospoda Glembajevi, and now also in Čekajući svog čovika, a semi-musical set in WW2-era Split about a woman waiting for her husband to come back from the war. As so often with Seve, the major selling point seems to be that she wears an outfit like this.

All this has inevitably been the cue for several journalists to ring up various actresses for quotes along the lines of 'Severina's taking our work away', and for several other journalists to ring up Severina so that she can go I'd like to see them sing!.

Severina's linked with two films, as well: Duhovi Sarajeva (The Ghosts of Sarajevo), where she's starring as a Split student searching for her half-brother in Sarajevo, and, possibly, a new musical by the 1970s Croatian director Lordan Zafranović. This clearly represents quite an advance in Seve's film career: after all, her last release went straight to video.

24 sata, however, reports she has competition for the lead in the shape of starlet Žanamari Lalić.

On the face of it, there's no contest. Žanamari is the winner of Hrvatski Idol - don't mention her failure to make the finals of the German edition the previous year - who began her post-reality career by pottering around with some water jugs on this year's Dora singing Kako da te volim. The second-, third-, and fifth-placed contestants from that series took the same route: they ganged up as Feminnem, entered the Bosnian final instead, and went all the way to Eurovision with a Swedish schlager pastiche. (One Feminnemica then threw a minor hissy fit because Croatia had given maximum points to Serbia-Montenegro instead of them.) Here, incidentally, is what they all sang to get there: think Aguilera, Anastacia, and the casting-show stalwart You Make Me Feel Like Throwing A Brick At The Screen If Anyone Ever Sings It Again A Natural Woman.

Severina, on the other hand is... Severina. And anyone expecting (more) barbed comments on her extensive film experience should go elsewhere, such as to Hajduk Split's stadium, where an entire Croatian football crowd chanted at her to take her clothes off in August when she sang the national anthem before the team's friendly match against Brazil.