Sedmikrásky

This was the most pleasurable thing I've ever watched. The scenes were beautifully put together. The style changed from black and white to sepia to colourful, sometimes with a blueish tint, sometime with other colours. I loved the saccadic camera movements that matched certain sounds, e.g. a phone ringing. The actresses' styling (clothes, hair, makeup) was also beautiful. The music was very good (e.g. an epic battle kind of piece of music during the cake fight between the girls). I liked the fact that the plot's point was to explore how the girls' reaction to the world's "badness" will end. But there were certain points that I didn't quite understand. I didn't really like how the girls sometimes spoke in a robotic manner, or how they seemed too naive and silly. Maybe that was the point: perfection isn't art anyway. I appreciate the fact that the director (Vera Chytilova) made this film in a time when women didn't have the freedom they have today. One of the main themes in the film is women breaking the barriers of the society they live in, and the rules dictating their behaviour. It really is emblematic in that sense. Overall I really enjoyed watching this film, but I didn't get where the plot was going, and where it actually went, plus the details I mentioned. But I would recommend it to anyone.

Blond Marie and brunette Marie are best friends and chaos creators. Brunette Marie declares that the world is spoiled and they're going to do the spoiling.

The girls are doing sexy baby acting. Their characters are bratty children living off of their sex appeal. Mostly, they are sex teases tricking food out of horny men. The film is experimental, doing a lot of different things all over the place. It's trying very hard to be surreal. Sometimes, it's using wacky sounds. It keeps switching from black and white to color while sometimes doing different color filters. I find a lot of it akin to student films trying to be artistic. It does stumble on some interesting effects once in awhile. The streaming train looks cool and the poker dot dresses are fun. There are intriguing edits. That's this movie. It's throwing a lot of spaghetti on the wall and some of them actually sticks. I just wish that it could limit the number of weird effects to give the best ideas more weight. It's strangely fascinating and an intriguing look into cinema at a certain time in a certain place. It's saying something about the atmosphere in Prague and the approach of spring.

For its renewal of the spirit of DADA, for its sixties potlatch, for its fine excess, for its playful modernist montage, this is certainly the most formally revolutionary of all the Czech New Wave films I have seen. It escapes and transcends the heavy moral dissidence of the other great Prague Spring directors, and even manages to transcend its time and place. An authentic work of creative genius, its 'high spirits' belong to another world, a world which subverts the grip of everyday totalitarianism, and, as DADA updated, topples the philistines left and right.

Chytilova surpasses even the genial Jiri Menzel in her blissful critique of the pieties and austerities associated with the Czech Stalinist regime under President Husak. DAISIES is an exercise in revolutionary modernism, anarch-dadaist in spirit and form. 21 deputies objected in parliament to the extravagant waste of food in the film, and Chytilova had to defend her film on communist-moral grounds: i.e. the two female protagonists (Marie 1 Jitka Cerkova, Marie 2 Ivana Karbanova) were spoilt brats to be condemned as so much waste-matter in the body politic of the workers' state. But we know that they are feminist anarchists, living (in terms of the plot narrative) off silly old men who buy them dinners, and (in terms of the poetic texture of the film) calling everything into question with the unquenchable brio of cartoon characters (they eat even photographs of food from glossy magazines). We, the audience, are happily infected (even today in the new millennium) by the blessed spirit of nihilism Chytilova has conjured up in those dangerous and exhilarating days of the Prague Spring. First there was Kafka (AMERIKA), then there was Hasek (THE GOOD SOLDIER SVEJK), and then there was Vera Chytilova. DAISIES is in my top ten films ever made.

Terrific surreal comedy combined with biting social commentary. From the very first scene, the film presents a world that is both deeply absurd and eerily familiar, drawing the viewer in with its off-kilter humor and playful tone.

The two lead actresses, Jitka Cerhová and Ivana Karbanová, give stunning performances as the two young women who gleefully embark on a series of outrageous adventures, from dining on mountains of food to wreaking havoc at a fancy dinner party. Their chemistry is electric, and their anarchic energy carries the film's narrative to its satisfyingly bizarre conclusion.

But beneath the surface of this madcap romp lies a deeper message about the nature of society and the roles we are expected to play within it. The film's critiques of consumerism, gender roles, and societal expectations are just as relevant today as they were in 1966, and the film's surreal visuals and absurdist humor make those critiques all the more potent.

Daisies is a great piece of cinematic art, a bizarre comedy that you can't look away from, with a trenchant social commentary that is just as relevant today as it was over 50 years ago.