Czech Republic

Marguerite (2015)

André Crous

The story of a woman who sang opera even though she did not have a shred of talent is more enchanting than it sounds.

marguerite-xavier-giannoliFrance/Czech Republic
4*

Director:
Xavier Giannoli
Screenwriters:
Xavier Giannoli
Marcia Romano
Director of Photography:
Glynn Speeckaert

Running time: 130 minutes

In Citizen Kane, Charles Foster Kane’s second wife’s ambition of being an opera singer, despite having a terrible voice, was bankrolled by her rich husband, a newspaper tycoon and heir to a sizable fortune. The reviews were terrible, but their isolation from the rest of society served to protect her from the overwhelmingly negative response from both the public and the critics.

Marguerite, a French-Czech-Belgian co-production, provides French comedy legend Catherine Frot with a similar role – one informed by the real-life story of the wealthy but notoriously out-of-tune opera soprano Florence Foster Jenkins. Frot stars as the titular Marguerite, a French baroness whom we first encounter at a private recital in aid of First World War orphans. She is the only one who fails to recognise her attempt at channelling Mozart’s “Queen of the Night’s Aria” (Der Hölle Rache) from The Magic Flute is so crass it sounds like a cat is being strangled. The high society audience can barely restrain themselves from snickering into their perfumed sleeves.

But while many a newspaper excoriates her performance, one even running the headline “Pauvre Mozart” (Poor Mozart), a single critic, the dashing young Lucien Beaumont, lavishes her with ambiguous praise when he remarks that her voice seemed to want to expel some demon from the room. Of course, Beaumont has an ulterior motive, as we can easily guess when we see his friend, Kyrill, regale a well-to-do woman at the recital with tales of an art gallery he wants to open and inquires about the possibility of an investment.

Set between 1920 and 1921, Marguerite makes seamless transitions across time that become veritable leaps toward the end, as the baroness, with no shortage of instigation by Beaumont, moves toward an unskilled performance on a large public stage. Small moments along the way highlight her most intimate relationships, complicated by the lies people tell to spare her the pain of the truth.

It would be easy to dismiss the central character as a thinly veiled embodiment of anyone surrounded by yes-men and yes-women who merely exacerbate a toxic situation by avoiding the potentially agonising conversation that breaks the truth: This woman cannot sing to save her life.

However, such a view of the film would be overly simplistic, as Marguerite, thanks to Frot, is endearing and close to naïve but does not have a single mean bone in her body. Persistent exposure to her singing may cause some people to pine for hearing loss, but she is not hurting anyone, and telling her she is delusional and sounds worse than a broken bagpipe may wreck her life, which revolves around her love of music.

She has accumulated in excess of 1,400 partitions, some from the great masters of opera, and she seems to know the libretti by heart. But as those in the music industry are astounded to learn, such a deep knowledge of the fifth art does not preclude one from reproducing it with utter ineptitude, albeit with heart and soul.

Frot, however, is in complete control of her portrayal of the musically challenged baroness. Marguerite is serene and focused like a laser on the task at hand: Sharing her love of the opera with those around her. In this task she is loyally assisted by her butler, Madelbos, who has her best interests at heart and, considering the impressive collection of pictures he has taken of her in various poses, likely also yearns for her affection.

Director Xavier Giannoli, who presents his material with a straight face, includes the symbol of the peacock, which we never see displaying the beautiful colours of its feathers but whose screams we do hear at irregular intervals around the house (the sound is not dissimilar from the brief meow of a cat).

All the main parts are admirably depicted, and it is to Giannoli’s credit that this inherent romp is lighthearted but never turns into a circus. Unexpectedly, Marguerite’s climax is both funny and deeply affecting, as a moment of magical realism turns the spectacle into a heartfelt recognition of the purity of Dumont’s desire to be close to her husband and to sing her heart out. The balance here, as elsewhere in the film, is highly commendable.

The 127-minute film never feels like a drag; on the contrary, some characters – like Hazel, a talented young graduate from the conservatory, or the slightly mysterious Madelbos, who likes to take pictures of objects being consumed by fire and leaves an indelible imprint on the viewer – are sorely underdeveloped. Nonetheless, the effortless distinction with which the director and his leading lady present the comedic melodrama of this peculiar individual whom we cannot but pity makes for a very gratifying film.

Family Film (2015)

André Crous

A family is torn apart, a dog fends for itself, and the director proves his filmmaking chops with an unexpectedly affecting work of dramatic fiction.

family-filmCzech Republic/Slovenia
4*

Director:
Olmo Omerzu 
Screenwriters:
Olmo Omerzu
Nebojša Pop-Tasić
Director of Photography:
Lukáš Milota

Running time: 95 minutes

Original title: Rodinný film

Following up on his widely hailed début, A Night Too Young (Příliš mladá noc), Slovenian-born FAMU graduate Olmo Omerzu’s sophomore feature – shot once again in his second language – is yet further proof of the young director’s (he turned 30 during production) talent for storytelling: He manages to tackle a theme as serious as the crumbling family unit with a mixture of short, powerful revelations in a snow-swept Prague and lyrical, wordless snippets on a tropical island in the eastern Indian Ocean.

In a deceptively simple but well-chosen opening scene, which takes place inside the family sedan of Igor Kubín, his son and daughter are watching a nature documentary on the television embedded on the back of his headrest. Igor’s wife, Irena, asks him whether he took their sheepdog, a Border Collie named Otto, to get vaccinated. Igor sheepishly admits he forgot. In the meantime on the documentary, a frog unceremoniously meets its end.

Igor and Irena leave for a yachting expedition around Christmas Island and expect everything back home to go well as they will keep in touch with their teenage son, Erik, and his elder sister, Anna, via Skype. But when the cat’s away, the mice will play, and they do so no sooner than on the way back from dropping their parents off at the airport, when they pick up Anna’s friend Kristýna.

Omerzu is cautious to show too much too quickly, and he uses small but striking hints that things are headed south, for example by ending many a scene on a slightly awkward facial expression that firmly indicates the situations are not as innocent as they seem at first. The day after his parents leave, Erik arrives back home to find the doors to the building’s elevator closing shut, and we briefly spot Kristýna, stark-naked, inside.

She later explains to him that she plays this game because she is bored, and before long she turns her sights and her wiles on the naïve Erik, whom his father had playfully advised to enjoy himself in moderation. The calculating Kristýna moves in with Anna and Erik, and even when the children’s uncle Martin eventually turns up, she stays put, sometimes snuggling up next to Erik in bed, at other times stroking his hand or licking his ear.

All the while, there are glimpses of sun-kissed beaches, palm trees and turquoise waters half a world away, where Igor and Irena are blissfully ignoring any possibility their children would get into trouble. It is only when Anna receives an unexpected phone call about her brother’s fortnight-long absence from school that she is compelled to convene a Skype intervention between her, her parents and a teacher from school. Irena wants to go home at once, but Igor insists there is nothing they can do but bide their time.

At first, it is challenging to understand what Omerzu is getting at, or why he wants to tell us this story. But everything changes in the final third, which in formal terms is also by far his most ambitious act, as all the pieces suddenly come together in a stunning contrast of wrenching heartache and serene tranquillity, as revelations about the family structure in Prague play off against scenes of perseverance in a tropical wilderness, with Otto stranded on a deserted island.

Although there is little development in his character, the story of Otto the dog unexpectedly turns out to be one of the most impressive additions to the screenplay. His arrival on the island is a gorgeous example of Omerzu’s talents, as the camera follows the dog slowly swimming ashore, time and time again briefly disappearing from view behind the crest of the wave before re-emerging, snout in the air. The scene will be sure to leave many a viewer breathless, thanks to the visual dynamics we are made witness to.

Other scenes with or around Otto are equally mesmerising, from a palm tree hit by lightning to crabs scurrying surreptitiously behind the dog while it takes shelter from the rain. The film’s final scene is another astonishing triumph, and Omerzu’s decision to let it play out with barely a word of dialogue demonstrates his eye for cinematic intensity.

Family Film is a rich, satisfying experience of a minimalist storyline that includes a handful of unforeseen developments, all presented with a firm hand and no desire to shock. The director is in complete control of his material, and while a few characters lack depth or motivation, the last act of the film is a wonderful display of a range of feelings, from passive aggression to love and forgiveness.

Viewed at the 2015 San Sebastián International Film Festival

Flower Buds (2011)

André Crous

PoupataCzech Republic
4.5*

Director:
Zdeněk Jiráský
Screenwriter:
Zdeněk Jiráský
Director of Photography:
Vladimír Smutný

Running time: 94 minutes

Original title: Poupata

Misery loves company, and whatever shape that company takes, real or illusory, the happiness, however short-lived, can make for powerful storytelling.

The plot of the Czech film Flower Buds (Poupata) is steeped in distress and hopelessness, but it is a slow-motion car crash from which we cannot turn our eyes away even for a second.

Similar in tone, though not in style, to the despair that seeps through the work of Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Inárritu (especially in 21 Grams and Biutiful), Flower Buds is constructed out of small, well-chosen incidents that sustain each other and never come across as either contrived or superfluous.

Set around Christmastime in and around the small industrial town of Nové Sedlo in the north-west of the country, most of the scenes feature a factory in the background that pumps smoke into the crisp air of the countryside.

In the opening scene, we find Jarda at his post next to a railway crossing, where he receives telephone calls to inform him of approaching trains, as a result of which he has to lower and raise the boom for the odd car that passes by. After work, he heads straight for the local herna bar, or mini-casino, one of those infamous bastions of decadence found almost everywhere in the Czech Republic, where he exchanges yet another heirloom for a shot at the jackpot.

Jarda is, without a doubt, the most tragic character in the film, and Vladimír Javorský plays him without any sugarcoating. Though he is already on a steady downhill slide when we meet him, we quickly realise he has been caught in the web of his gambling addiction for a very long time. His wife, Kamila, knows the family is in dire straits (though she has no idea just how bad the situation actually is, or is about to be) and tries to help out by undressing to pose for a calendar, together with fellow exercise friends, with the goal of earning some extra money. Kamila has dreams of visiting the Amazon and believes her husband is saving up to make that dream come true.

Meanwhile, Jarda’s teenage son, Honza, is smitten with a stripper named Carmen, or Zuzana, who performs at the same herna bar from time to time, and he sets his sights on “saving” her, although he luckily doesn’t have any ambitions of being Travis Bickle.

The characters are all at the end of a slippery rope – we also learn early on that Honza’s sister is pregnant, though the identity of the father is left ambiguous – and have little to no hope of climbing back up. A Vietnamese couple, friends of the family, is also enduring enormous hardship. Despite having spent many years in the Czech Republic, they do not speak the language well and feel completely out of place in this place where it seems, from the look of the film, they have been condemned to an eternal winter.

Jarda tells them to get used to living here, to start thinking in this language and let it be a part of who they are, but it is difficult to consider him a serious model to look up to, given his own spiral of hopelessness. Viewers will find themselves easily sympathising with the Vietnamese couple, though, as their refrain of “Do prdele se sněhem!” (Roughly translated as “This snow can go to hell!”) is both endearing and a very understandable, perhaps even recognisable, cry for help, especially to anyone who has ever suffered from a feeling dépaysement in a new, very different environment.

On the surface, this is a small, character-driven drama set in a small town where the herna bar offers hope of a better tomorrow while at the same time crushing those dreams in front of our very eyes.

It is therefore refreshing to see how director Zdeněk Jiráský discovers surprising lyricism – beauty is too strong a word – in the rough elements that make up his story: a middle-aged woman in a red tracksuit doing her morning exercise outside in the snow with a fuming factory behind her; a drunk teenager dressed up as an angel walking around in the snow at night time, eerily lit up by the lights of the same factory in the distance; a short but agonising track-out from Jarda as he feeds his life insurance to the slot machine, a shot that embodies our desire to flee such a scene of desperation.

Flower Buds is an examination of obsession every bit as potent as Requiem for a Dream, but it is rooted firmly in realism rather than hyperrealism. This is an epically tragic film that is not at all a depressing viewing experience and demands to be seen.

In the Shadow of the Horse (2012)

André Crous

Ve stinuCzech Republic
4.5*

Director:
David Ondříček
Screenwriter:
Marek Epstein
Director of Photography:
Adam Sikora

Running time: 101 minutes

Original title: Ve stínu
Alternate English title: In the Shadow

Ve stínu (In the Shadow of the Horse) is a perfectly controlled work of historical significance that is coherent and approachable even for those who know very little about the history of the present-day Czech Republic.

With the tragedy of history in the background, the film is more interested in the human dimension and takes as its centrepiece an honest policeman and his family who are all struggling under the burden of living in a society that is gradually becoming more oppressive and where the walls will soon have ears.

The policeman’s name is Captain Hakl, and, as played by Ivan Trojan, he is compassionate, especially in the moments when he lets his guard down around his wife and young son — and sensitive to the dangers they might face as a result of the government’s desire to hold on to power, even if it means stealing their own people’s money to do that.

The year is 1953, and rumours are rife the government is planning a monetary reform, which would mean that the currency loses its value overnight and the country’s citizens are left with a fraction of their former wealth.

But high-level government officials, including newly chosen President Antonín Zápotocký, deny they are considering a reform of the Czechoslovak crown, and even Captain Hakl believes he would know if such a big project were really underway. But his wife doesn’t have the same faith in the authorities as her husband and tells him they should draw all their money and invest it in art for the sake of their son.

The horse in the English title seems to be connected to a radio broadcast early in the film, in which the country’s finance minister, Jaroslav Kabeš, laughs off the implication that his office is making places to reform the currency, and states that this idea is a dead horse gossipmongers should bury instead of continuing to beat.

With whispers about monetary reform in the background, on the radio, from the newspaper vendor at the famous former tram stop on Prague’s Wenceslas Square, and most importantly, coming from Hakl’s own wife, Jitka, there is a palpable sense that the characters all know where things are headed but consider themselves unable to ask tough questions for fear of discovering they might be right.

There are many parts to this film, though it all appears to be deceptively simple. When a jewellery store is burgled in the middle of the night and a safe robbed of its contents, the police detectives track down the most likely suspect, a Jewish man called Kirsch, who Hakl soon realizes is innocent.

But innocence has no place in the machinations of the Communist Party’s police investigations and, soon enough, State Security, supported by an East German detective named Zenke (Sebastian Koch), makes it clear Kirsch is the man, even linking him with a bloody shoot-out at the post office, though here, too, Hakl has uncovered evidence that contradicts the official position.

The film is drenched from beginning to end, as director David Ondříček (perhaps best-known for his film Loners, or Samotáři, in 2000) makes it clear that in this world of gloom good men often cannot save themselves through their struggles. But, despite Ondříček’s sombre-toned images and the almost constant rainfall, the film never makes style a priority to the detriment of its story. The focus on character rather than form means this is a much more intimate take on the events surrounding the monetary reform, rather than merely a historical document.

Slowly, the real substance of the film comes into view, and what we get is a view of an honest man, a wife who feels loved but somewhat neglected and fearful, and a boy who will be his father’s age when the revolution eventually rolls around in 1989. The scenes between Hakl and his wife and son are devoid of sentiment yet deeply touching, thanks in large part to Trojan’s very measured performance as a man who knows it’s not easy to do the right thing but wants to be the father his son can be proud of, yet has to be mindful of the safety of everyone close to him. Trojan’s powerful depiction of a policeman in 1969 Czechoslovakia in the breathtaking HBO miniseries Burning Bush (Hořící keř) is very similar to his role here.

In the end, the scenes most often associated with this terrible era in Czechoslovak history — the show trials and the uprising in Plzeň — are either missing or downplayed. But instead of highlighting misery, Ondříček’s film has tender scenes with complex characters that reveal great humanity in the midst of such a thoughtful, poetic treatment of past injustices.

 

This is a slightly modified version of the writer’s review that first appeared in The Prague Post.

Czech Dream (2004)

André Crous

Cesky senCzech Republic
3.5*

Directors:
Vít Klusák
Filip Remunda
Screenwriters:
Vít Klusák
Filip Remunda
Directors of Photography:
Vít Klusák
Filip Remunda

Original title: Český sen

Running time: 90 minutes

Vít and Filip are documentary filmmakers from the prestigious Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU), who will use their documentary skills over the course of the film to examine the gullibility of the average Czech citizen in 2003 by using an approach with a wholly unreal central object.

In the run-up to the Czech Republic’s decision to join the European Union, the country was inundated by a very well-funded government campaign to nudge (or push) Czechs in the direction of voting “yes” in the referendum. The glossy campaign led Vít Klusák and Filip Remunda, final-year film students, to consider the impact such marketing has on a population, especially when the goal (joining the European Union) is more or less intangible.

They decided to use money from the Ministry of Culture to fund a project that would see them advertise a new hypermarket in Prague. The hypermarket would be called “Český sen” (Czech Dream) and the prices would be a small fraction of those paid in other hypermarkets. This happened around the time the country was first introduced to big shopping malls and chain supermarkets with reduced prices where customers could buy everyday groceries in bulk and find everything they looked for in one store, under one roof.

Using one of the top advertising agencies in the capital, the filmmaking duo proceed as if the hypermarket is real, even constructing an enormous scaffold on an open field outside the city. For the duration of the campaign, the location of the shop is kept a secret, and the marketing approach is playful and unconventional, touting a big surprise for everyone who comes on the opening day and telling potential shoppers everywhere not to spend, not to come, not to bother. So, reverse psychology. 

But the approach is surprisingly effective, and the whole city goes into quite a frenzy about the ridiculously low prices on the advertising pamphlets, including an offer of a colour television set for $25. If things are too good to be true, they usually are, but it’s difficult to kill a dream before reality hits you in the face. The hypermarket also has television spots and even an official jingle, complete with violins and a children’s choir.

We know this can’t end well, with people necessarily being disappointed, but the film’s interviews with a wide range of people, all of whom pitched up one sunny May 31 to witness the opening of, well, not a shopping mall, shows the expected mixture of anger and disillusionment. Walking from the holding area across a large open field to the scaffolding behind which the new mall supposedly lies, one individual already questions whether this is what the country’s future looks like if it joins the European Union, with malls like these, in the middle of nowhere, sprouting up.

Introduced by the filmmakers on the empty space in the suburb of Letňany that would be the location of their prank, we are in on the joke from the beginning, but as we spend very little time with them when they are portraying themselves (rather than acting the parts of the managers of the new mega shop), it is difficult to judge their attitude towards the people they are duping. Do they consider themselves superior? Do they think they are smart and the average Czech is a stupid fool? Or do they ever realise that their marketing campaign was good enough to pique the interest of even the most sceptical potential shopper?

We don’t know, but the opening shot showing Czechoslovaks in 1972 queuing for groceries, which eerily resembles the hordes rushing towards the scaffolding on May 31, 2003, is an indication that the filmmakers themselves don’t think much has changed, although that would be a terrible simplification of the situation.

The film is funny and certainly succeeds in pushing the envelope while it peeks behind the scenes of the advertising business (with those working in the industry memorably claiming that they never lie, and have terrible moral qualms with the filmmakers’ empty promises). Their fellow cameramen are determined to get answers from their interviewees and deserve a lot of credit for their persistence, though ultimately we don’t learn much from this material.

Czech Dream is a film that made a big splash upon its release, because it changed reality in order to be filmed, which can be risky terrain for a filmmaker, and the film’s directors fail by not being more visible in their own work or explaining their motivations. During a final question-and-answer session with furious would-be shoppers, they try to justify their actions, but we are not convinced. The film is based on a clever idea with some nifty details that may be inspired by the production of a fake war in Barry Levinson’s Wag the Dog but suffers greatly from the under-involvement of its central characters. At one point, a mother in a parking lot sings “Hey, ho, nobody home”, a very serendipitous moment caught on film by Klusák and Remunda, and one that is bound to stick in your head as you watch both the crowds walking across an empty field and the filmmakers speaking to the angry mob.