Beauty can, at least temporarily, overcome the boundaries of class and economics and in this case, the beauty in question in the 2006 Czech film, Beauty in Trouble (Kráska v nesnázích) is Marcela (Anna Geislerová).
She is married to Jarda (Roman Luknár) and her troubles began long ago, but the current problem are the economic woes resulting from the 2002 flood in Prague. Her house is ruined and Jarda is now reduced to working for a chop shop. They still have a healthy and passionate sex life and in their current tight quarters, her children can hear their lovemaking. Jarda is arrested for car theft and Marcela meets a much older richer man, Evzen Benes (Josef Abrham) at the police station. It is his car that Jarda stole.
Alone and with only her income, she finds herself back with her mother (Jana Brejchová) and her stepfather, Uncle Richie (Jirí Schmitzer).
Evzen had immigrated to Italy and become a vintner and has returned now that the post-communist government recognizes his claim to the family house. He begins to court Marcela and offers her a place to stay.
Uncle Richie is more than a little creepy, offering to expose himself to Marcela's oldest child, Lucina (Michaela Mrvikova). He's more tolerable to the asthmatic Kuba (Adam Misik) but neither really like him. Yet eventually, Marcela moves in with Evzen although it is she that finally decides to begin a sexual relationship with him.
The title comes from a Robert Graves poem that was later adapted into a Czech song and in this movie is performed by a folk singer, Raduza. The line is "Beauty in trouble flees to the good angel/On whom she can rely."
This film by director Jan Hrebejk and writer Petr Jarchovsky has some creepy, unresolved aspects. We learn that Marcela's oldest child is not Jarda's. He took her in when she left home, young, jobless and pregnant. There's a suggestion that Uncle Richie might even be the father. With her children to think of, Marcela makes an economic decision, one that is easier because Evzen as portrayed by Abrham is essentially a good and patient man. If Marcela doesn't still love Jarda, we know that she lusts for him, but who wouldn't want a better life--not only for oneself, but for one's children.
Perhaps, given time, a widowed Marcela will be re-united with Jarda. Still the creepier aspects of Uncle Richie are ignored, dropped after Marcela flees her mother's apartment.
Well-acted, this movie reminds us of the realities of flooded cities and as New Orleans and other places are evacuated or declared disaster areas, that Americans have more in common with other places than perhaps we realize.
On the prowl in this locale since 22 June 2008:
30 August 2008
Life and Crime in Poland - Retrieval (Z Odzysku)
This 2006 movie written by Slawomir Fabicki, Denijal Hasanovic and Marek Pruchniewski and directed by Fabicki is a dark and depressing tale about 19-year-old Wojtek's (Antoni Pawlicki) attempt to rise out of poverty in a small Polish town. Working in a dangerous cement pit, Wojtek also boxes to earn extra money. The boss of a local disco (Jacek Braciak) offers him a safer job: working as a bouncer at his disco, but his boss also runs a loan shark business and his bouncers provide the muscle.
In love with an older woman, an illegal Ukrainian immigrant Katja (Natalya Vdovina) who has a son Andryi (Dimitri Melnichuk), Wojtek want to find a bigger better apartment. He does find a nice place, but slowly sheds his charm as he's forced to make hard decisions and hurt people in his new line of business. One way his boss teaches him heartlessness is a target practice exercise involving dogs. As Wojtek becomes increasingly alienated from his conscience and numbed to violence, his behavior changes. Eventually, Katja leaves him and finds refuge with Wojtek's family who also reject him.
This isn't, of course, a new story. Fabicki doesn't have the big budget of a Hollywood movie and his film isn't as slick or well filmed. The indoor lighting has a yellow or greenish cast at times and it doesn't seem intentional. Yet this is a reminder that poverty and desperation aren't an American problem nor is it a problem of the past. Here race isn't an issue with Latino or African American gangs and drug dealers.
Yet this movie portrays the gangster culture as not culturally entrenched as cool. Andryi becomes the target of derision and gets in a fight with when other neighborhood kids tell him Wojtek is a gangster. Perhaps America was there, once upon a time when gangsta-style wasn't fashionable or glamorous.
In love with an older woman, an illegal Ukrainian immigrant Katja (Natalya Vdovina) who has a son Andryi (Dimitri Melnichuk), Wojtek want to find a bigger better apartment. He does find a nice place, but slowly sheds his charm as he's forced to make hard decisions and hurt people in his new line of business. One way his boss teaches him heartlessness is a target practice exercise involving dogs. As Wojtek becomes increasingly alienated from his conscience and numbed to violence, his behavior changes. Eventually, Katja leaves him and finds refuge with Wojtek's family who also reject him.
This isn't, of course, a new story. Fabicki doesn't have the big budget of a Hollywood movie and his film isn't as slick or well filmed. The indoor lighting has a yellow or greenish cast at times and it doesn't seem intentional. Yet this is a reminder that poverty and desperation aren't an American problem nor is it a problem of the past. Here race isn't an issue with Latino or African American gangs and drug dealers.
Yet this movie portrays the gangster culture as not culturally entrenched as cool. Andryi becomes the target of derision and gets in a fight with when other neighborhood kids tell him Wojtek is a gangster. Perhaps America was there, once upon a time when gangsta-style wasn't fashionable or glamorous.
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