Líbánky

The Czech film Líbánky was shown in the U.S. with the title Honeymoon (2013). It was directed by Jan Hrebejk.

The movie begins with a church wedding in a small Czech town. The wedding celebration takes place at a nearby estate owned by the bride's father. (The title "Honeymoon" is misleading. The action all takes place during the prolonged celebration.)

The bride, Tereza (Anna Geislerová) and the groom, Radim (Stanislav Majer), make an attractive couple. The groom has an adolescent son by a previous marriage. The boy appears to have a good relationship with his father and new stepmother, and everything is proceeding smoothly.

However, an uninvited guest at the wedding--Jan Benda, played by Jirí Cerný--casts a pall on the celebration. He doesn't actually do or say anything hostile, but he somehow manages to transmit a sense of menace.

We learn that Jan Benda has a grievance against the groom, which he shares with the bride and with us little by little as the movie progresses. The denouement of the film is frightening and somewhat brutal. The question remains whether--once the truth is known--the couple will maintain the relationship that we saw at the beginning of the movie.

We watched this film at the Dryden Theatre as part of Image Out--the Rochester LGBT Film Festival. The early scenes will probably work better on the large screen, but the dramatic parts of the film will work equally well on the small screen.