Festivals: Karlovy Vary

By Alissa Simon

The simple shorthand of “Where East meets West” no longer serves to describe the comprehensive program of exciting films, industry services and accompanying events that comprise the Czech Republic’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Now in its 40th year, with 242 features screening over nine days, the deservedly reputed festival once again showcased the new and artistically significant alongside ten well-chosen tributes and thematic sidebars.

Sixteen Czech films screened in a special section devoted to recent productions. One of the more striking was Maria Prochåzkova’s Shark in the Head, a compassionate tragi-comedy that mixes live action and animation to create a subjective rendering of a schizophrenic’s mental state. Colour, atmosphere and framing convey dramatic development rather than conventional storytelling. Her use of the Cinemascope format evokes feelings of loneliness and emptiness, while animation techniques such as pixilation, drawn animation, animation of objects and 2D digital animation conjure the character’s irrational thoughts.

Slovak director Martin Sulik’s Czech-Slovak co-production The City of the Sun screened in the feature competition. The grand prizewinner from the national festival in Pilsen, it marks a move away from the magical realism of Sulik’s early features and towards the ironic social comedy of Alice Nellis’ Eeny Meeny (2000) and Bohdan Slama’s Wild Bees (2000). Set in the industrial town of Ostrava, home of the Czech Republic’s highest unemployment rates, it follows four unemployed factory workers whose efforts to start a moving business end up threatening their friendship. While recalling The Full Monty, it happily steers clear of that film’s preciousness, its humour—and drama—firmly and truthfully rooted in the precarious reality of daily life.

A special focus on Canada brought sixteen films and a variety of guests, reflecting the strength of the country’s filmmaking and its multicultural character. In addition to the latest efforts by Atom Egoyan, Robert Lepage and Bruce McDonald, it included lesser known offerings such as Sabah, The Delicate Art of Parking, Gaz Bar Blues, White Skin, Littoral, and I, Claudia, along with the documentaries Midnight Movies and Shake Hands with the Devil, plus a mini-retrospective for prairie prodigy Gary Burns. Why Canada? Perhaps to illustrate the existence of a cinema of auteurs just north of the Hollywood mammoth? Or maybe, as program director Julietta Zacharova noted, “The people of central Europe enjoy small films which revolve around just a few characters. We like this intimacy and we like to follow one character struggling with obstacles because we went through so many changes ourselves.”

The francophone competition entry Life with my Father, a comic drama by Quebec’s Sébastien Rose, drew a five-minute standing ovation from an overflow crowd of 1400 and went on to win the Festival’s Audience Award. The film tells the story of a bon vivant who returns, terminally ill and sexually impotent, to his rundown Montreal mansion where he reconnects with his estranged sons, one a pseudo-intellectual would-be writer, the other an uptight pharmaceuticals executive. Recalling Denys Arcand’s The Barbarian Invasions (2003) while lacking Arcand’s subtlety and emotional veracity, Rose nevertheless manages to make the foibles of this dysfunctional family suddenly forced to live together again mildly entertaining.

Another special section, “World War II: 60 Years After,” contained rarities such as Rene Clement’s The Battle of the Rails (1949), an ode to the French railway workers who clandestinely fought against the Germans, featuring spectacular scenes of real train derailments. Even rarer, Russian director Yuli Raizman’s fascinating historical chronicle The Fall of Berlin (1945) employs both Soviet and German newsreel footage, with astounding shots by frontline cameramen of the ruined city captured under fire.

World War II also provided the setting for Czech writer-director Jirí Krejcík’s A Higher Principle (1960), a bold illumination of a dark chapter in Czech history, life under the German occupation. The action takes place in 1942 following the assassination of SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. In the provincial town of Pardubice, some senior students play a practical joke that draws the attention of the Gestapo. When three pupils are arrested, teachers and students are forced to confront the atrocities unfolding around them. This tensely paced film effectively demonstrates the toll exacted by fear and the higher principles to which a brave few can respond.

The irascible 87-year-old Krejcík, who received an award for outstanding contribution to world cinema, gazed approvingly from the stage of the ornate Municipal Theatre at a sea of scantily clad twenty-somethings with tanned midriffs. As he compared the 1940s with current Czech life, he noted that he was glad so many young people were seeing the film. Certainly they were pleased too. Krejcík’s masterpiece is now little seen in his home country and virtually unknown in North America.

Polish writer-director Krzysztof Krauze must have felt vindicated when his four-year labour of love My Nikifor, an original and beautifully executed take on the life of the famed outsider artist known swept the feature competition with awards for Best Film, Best Director and Best Actress (for the cross-gendered casting of octogenarian stage actress Krystyna Feldman in the title role). Far from a traditional biopic, it shows the outsider artist in the last years of his life through the eyes of Marian Wlosinski, a would-be painter and Communist party apparatchik. The film revolves around their peculiar relationship and Marian’s quest to learn more about Nikifor’s origins. Marian’s feelings for the physically and mentally disabled Nikifor change from irritation to admiration mixed with jealousy when he recognizes the man’s undeniable talent. The film makes believable Marian’s self-abasing urge to care for and promote the career of the older man, who accepts his assistance without comment or gratitude.

The ironically titled Israeli film What a Wonderful Place claimed the Special Jury Prize and Best Actor Award. Written and directed by Eyal Halfon, it manages to be compelling despite problems in tone when it wavers between gritty depictions of modern life and music-drenched sentimentality. The ambitious script relies too heavily on credulity-straining coincidence as it weaves together stories about foreign workers in Israel, revolving around the common theme of the need for dignity and human contact. Receiving the most screen time are the feisty Ukrainian prostitute Jana (Evelyne Kaplun) who is slapped around and then saved by gambling addict Franco (Uri Gavriel), a former policeman forced by heavy debt to work for a gangster who runs a brothel and casino. Gavriel, whose rough features have mostly brought him criminal roles, is surprisingly sexy in the part, subtly conveying his conflicted feelings on what his life has become.

While the reputation of the former Soviet Union suffers in What a Wonderful Place, Pavel Chukrai’s A Driver for Vera plays—somewhat tongue-in-cheek—to an iconic image of Soviet heroism. In 1962, on the Black Sea coast of Crimea, a secret power struggle between the army and KGB forms the backdrop to a torrid love triangle. Straight arrow army sergeant Victor is requisitioned as a chauffeur by gruff General Serov, who plots to have him marry his imperious, lame daughter Vera. Victor tries to combine decency with ambition but finds himself the pawn of darker forces, including the General’s conniving adjutant and the sexy maid Lida, who immediately sizes up the situation but still wants the hunky hero in her bed. Although overlooked by the jury, Vera proved a guilty pleasure for many with its stylish melodrama and slyly over-the-top performances.

—Alissa Simon

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