There's a no man's land that lies in a man's relationship with another man. Whether as brothers, fathers and sons, or friends, there's a Somme of emotional mines and trenches that most of us prefer to ignore. A lingering, schoolyard-variety of homosexual panic taints too many of our feelings, and so love, when felt between men who are friends, must be slyly implied in heartfelt handshakes or ever-so-meaningful jabs to the midriff or upper arm.

Vladimír Morávek's new film, Hrubes a Mares jsou Kamarádi do deste (currently showing at Kino Evald with English subtitles), is about two men who as kids become blood brothers (literally, in the squeamishly hilarious opening of the film), and who remain close ever after. Hrubes is actually a brave "buddy picture," a stale film genre normally geared to sublimate male affection into shared steroidal or slapstick misadventures. Morávek is clear in the opening titles that Hrubes a Mares is to be a "story about love," the recognition of it and its acceptance by two men. And he achieves, with often-bleak humor, a little miracle in the process.

Václav Hrubes and Josef "Pipa" Mares seem like unlikely mates. Hrubes (Jan Budar) is a willful slacker who has managed to get a job as a plainclothes ticket inspector on the metro (he would not have been out of place in Nimrod Antal's recent Hungarian film, Kontroll). Mares (Richard Krajco), on the other hand, is a dreamy wastrel who lives with his grandmother and who dedicates many hours to masturbating, usually while wearing his dead grandfather's CSSR Army uniform and listening to '70s Czech pop. Through various family upheavals, the two friends find themselves living together, and they're soon forced to confront their honest feelings for each other.

The catalyst for the two to analyze their long, taken-for-granted friendship (and the source for most of the film's comedy) is the impending departure of Hrubes to Tibet after he learns that he's the reincarnation of the dalai lama. In fact, Hrubes has been set up by a sleazy Slovak television producer, Robert Karpatti (Robert Roth), the mastermind behind a rather vicious form of Candid Camera. But in his naive belief that he might be holiness itself, Hrubes reaches a level of enlightenment that allows him to leave — at least momentarily — his laddish, purposeless existence to find some emotional bedrock. Plus, it becomes a wonderful excuse to engage in some tantric exercises with a young woman.

The script by Morávek and Budar, who also co-wrote Morávek's critically successful Nuda v Brne (Bored in Brno), is not without fault. Hrubes is, sadly, given to momentarily wondering whether Mares is gay (he's more a picture of arrested development than anything else). And the writers don't really allow Hrubes a believable trajectory to get from his profane former self to his newfound sacred state. But there's still much more to appreciate here, including various sideswipes at Czech cinema (Karpatti was kicked out of Slovakia after pulling a Czech Dream stunt), and a few pokes at Morávek and Budar's own Bored in Brno.

The performances, including work by veteran actors Miroslav Donutil and Iva Janzurová as Hrubes's parents, are excellent. And lovers of '60s and '70s Czech pop will get enough cameo appearances to excite them to Mares's heights.