Un été capricieux

Czech new wave director Jiri Menzel delivers such a lovely little film here that it's easy to forget it was made in a year of such tumult in his country and around the world. The story revolves around three friends who are living simply in a small town but enduring a rather oddly wet summer - a bathhouse owner, a priest, and a retired military officer, as well as the bathhouse owner's wife. Their lives are ruffled by the appearance of a traveling show in their town for three nights, one with a tightrope walker who also knows a few magic tricks, and his beautiful young assistant.

I love the lightness in this film - the banter in the dialogue, or moments where there is no dialogue at all, the editing that moves us between moments within a scene without drawing out all the details, and the playfulness in the direction, despite the serious topics of adultery and (to a lesser extent) the role of religion in the world. Rudolf Hrusinsky, the bathhouse owner, is even light in his movements - watch him as he rolls a barrel toward him with his foot and nonchalantly sits down, does the backstroke while smoking a cigar, or skips towards his buddies. Meanwhile you have the traveling magician (Jiri Menzel) performing his simple act with a charm of his own, and the ethereal scenes of his assistant (Jana Preissova), including when she gets her outstretched leg massaged, twirls around to smile with her umbrella in the rain, and performs a dance number until only the bathhouse owner remains.

It's kind of cute to see this young woman make the rounds between each of the friends on the three different nights the show is in town. In succession, she provokes a crisis in a marriage (though one which already had issues), a crisis in a priest sticking to his vows (though we've seen he has a wandering eye), and a crisis in the major to have his older body live up to the passion he wants to feel (he falls asleep after throwing the woman up on a table and beginning to ravage her). It exposes the foibles of these characters without being mean-spirited, feeling a little like an early Ingmar Bergman film.

I also liked the character of the bathhouse owner's wife (Mila Myslikova), even though there are bits of underlying misogyny in how she's presented. I liked how she was allowed to vent her frustrations about her husband's behavior, particularly as she had several other suitors to choose from when she was younger. He beat those other guys up and kept pestering her for sex until she was pregnant, that's the kind of guy he is, and it's clear he's played around plenty during their marriage. For her part, she fantasizes about the tightrope walker and engages in a little quid pro quo, going so far as to live with the him and his assistant, which was a little startling but refreshing. It regresses a bit when we see her shrewish behavior lead to discord and a rather meek return to her husband though.

At one point the priest makes a misogynistic comment about women not being able to be truly spiritual (or something like that), but throughout the film, we see just how weak and hypocritical this character is. Along with his buddies, we see him stare at a woman's butt as she walks away, and just like them, he doesn't spurn the seductive advances of the tightrope walker's assistant. His friends tell him in no uncertain terms that they don't believe their behavior has anything to do with God controlling the weather that summer, and that his sermons are on topics that are irrelevant to the common man.

The film was produced during the Prague Spring, a brief period of liberalization and protests that was followed by the Soviet Union brutally cracking down just months later. For the most part it steers clear of political matters, but I found this quote intriguing, particularly as it was delivered by Hrusinsky while looking into the camera a couple of times:

"Distance is measured by yearning, abundance is measured by hunger, and action is preceded by play. Or do you believe, Major, that everything arises out of the playfulness and courage of those people who, not creating either books or consumer objects, have enough time to prattle on like gods and arrange things in a surprising order?"

As the previous reviewers have noted this second film from Czech New Wave director Jiri Menzel has loveliness, charm, whimsicality, gentleness, wistfulness, lightness, airiness, poignancy and, of course, capriciousness. What it most sedulously does not have are laughs, at least in great profusion or even, for that matter, many chuckles or upturned corners of the mouth. And as this film is intended to be a comedy that is a significantly painful omission. Give it a C, mostly for the director's ability to channel the atmosphere of a provincial town in Czechoslovakia in lazy, slumbrous summer. And the gals are definitely on the sexy side.

Pretty good-looking, very good music, erotic, relaxed, and poetic and philosophic in a pretty similar way to Godard's films from the 90ies. Unfortunately, people who do not speak Czech will probably miss many points of the dialogue.

8 out of 10.

Three middle-aged friends -- Rudolf Hrusínský, Vlastimil Brodský, and Frantisek Rehák -- are sitting around the nearly deserted swimming resort Hrusínský runs with his wife. A traveling magician and his assistant appear. The magician demonstrates some mediocre sleight-of-hand. It is his assistant, however, pretty, sixteen-year-old Jana Preissová, who causes a stir. The older men lust after her.... but can they do anything about it?

Director Jirí Menzel's next film after CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS suggests something pitched between Renoir and Bergman. Yet its more normative characters struggle with their mediocrity to be particularly interesting, and end up being mildly buffoonish. Since it was released during Prague Spring, it can be viewed as a satire of the Czechoslovakian government. Or it can be viewed as a satire of the people of the nation, lusting after things they cannot have, nor would they know what to do with them if they got them. I found it to be a series of character studies; hampered by the low-affect acting, it seems a lot less interesting than its reputation, developed during its decades of unavailability, would have it. However, that's not surprising. As the movie points out, things you cannot have are more attractive.

Most of the Czech films I've seen follow a familiar pattern: a history lesson revolving around war or occupation, along with lots of bohemian irony and iconic images, usually of Prague. This one's different. I enjoyed Kolya, and Menzel's other films (Closely Watched Trains and I Served the King of England), but I prefer this one for leaving out the pathos.

The irony would come through more clearly if I spoke any Czech beyond "dobre den", but this film still has plenty. A tattered little town with unpaved streets, drenched by miserable summer rain the whole way through. A visit by a fleabag circus supplies a limited amount of merriment - about what the little town deserves. About all they've come to expect, too, in their sodden little corner of Bohemia.

I wouldn't have watched this film at all if I hadn't already "read" the book. Josef Capek's witty illustrations for the novel led me to a movie which is every bit as good, and which fills in the details I couldn't read between the pictures.