L'après-midi d'un vieux faune

I'm not sure what this movie is about, or if it is any good. It covers a period of time in the life of an older man, who works in an office in Prague and has an interest in young ladies. He has a flamboyant personalty, as revealed through his various exclamations and comments to himself, though it's unclear if he is a fool or a gentleman. Seems the intention of the movie is some sort of existential absurdism, and it's rather fragmentary with bizarre camera-work at times. Though by all rights it should be an obnoxious experience, the film seems to have a sincere playfulness about it instead of being pretentious or cynical. Sucharípa's sympathetic performance enhances the obscure plot, though whether the movie is enjoyable probably depends on the viewer's mood.

This very funny comedy by the director of "Daisies" is one of her more successful later works, skewing the battle of the sexes in focusing on a paunchy, hairy middle-aged protagonist who still acts like an adolescent barely in control of his "magic wand." Not much of a success career-wise or in terms of relationships (beyond the ones he's always chasing), he's constantly distracted by the beautiful women around him, who are variably amused and appalled by his attentions. He's no suave Don Juan-he's a clown, and with no saving sense of humor about himself.

At first the director's use of frenetic hand-held camerawork and editing to heighten the farcical mood seems like it might be overkill, but actually this is a more or less one-joke movie that manages to sustain that joke pretty well. The lead actor is more than willing to be the object of its fun, giving a performance that's in the general realm of Zero Mostel (though less with less overbearing mugging). The bits of slapstick entailed by his character's perpetual cloddishness are funny, but the comedy here is less gag-oriented than something that springs organically from that character and his interactions with the world. Some of the best sequences are pseudo-typical "male gaze" interludes in which the camera ogles pretty women (including a beach-full of topless ones), but in giving equal time to the protagonist's grotesque drooling over the same, Vera C. renders that gaze ridiculous.

This "faun" may be a bit of a cultural archetype-a friend of mine who worked in diplomacy in Eastern Europe a few years after this movie said that at least in her experience, Czech men NEVER stop horndogging after much younger women, while seeming to forget that women their age even exist. Maybe that was only (or particularly) true in the circles she traveled in.