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Lady never sings the blues

A beautifully crafted Czech film by Alice Nellis
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By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
May 23rd, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Escape from a pre-packaged life. Iva Bittova in Alice Nellis' Tajnosti.
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Tajnosti

Directed by Alice Nellis
With Iva Bittová, Karel Roden, Ivan Franěk, Marta Issová and Miloslav König
With English subtitles at Světozor

Alice Nellis is probably best known for her theater work in Prague, as both a director and playwright based at Divadlo na Zábradlí. Yet this accomplished theater artist also has a small film career that is equally worthy of attention.
Her two earlier films, Ene bene from 2000 and Výlet from 2002, garnered international recognition, primarily at film festivals, and gained for Nellis various awards as a director and screenwriter within the Czech Republic. Now, five years after her last film, her most recent, Tajnosti, has made it to cinemas, and the wait was well worth it.
As with her two previous films, Tajnosti is a quiet, reflective meditation on the lives of a small group of people. The primary character, Julie (Iva Bittová), is a middle-aged woman who wakes in the middle of the night to take stock of her life. Her marriage to her husband (Karel Roden) has become mechanical — a relationship that, while still possessing respect, has become passionless.
Over breakfast with her husband and daughter (Marta Issová), she sees an obituary for Nina Simone on television. Stock footage of the revered jazz singer awakens Julie’s need to furnish her empty life with music.
The film becomes a “day in the life of,” as Julie meets with her lover, Karel, a theater director (Ivan Franěk), to put an end to their trysts; makes a doctor’s appointment; confronts her husband at work about their marriage’s stasis; meets a realtor who is trying to sell off the family’s old flat; and seeks to buy a second-hand piano so she can resume her long abandoned lessons. However, it’s an ordinary day that will become extraordinary.
Tajnosti is often breathtaking for its modesty and restraint. Nellis has carefully crafted each scene with her favorite cinematographer, the Lithuanian Ramunas Greičus, who shot both Ene bene and Výlet. The director and cinematographer storyboard each scene with paintings on paper before filming begins to establish the proper coloring and mood that they’re striving for, and this painstaking prep work often fills the screen with stunning still-lives and portraiture, such as Julie emerging from a plastic-covered couch as from a cocoon.
The stillness Nellis achieves allows her to keenly observe her characters and their milieu, creating a psychologically rich story. Tajnosti is primarily Bittová’s, and she provides the radiant core to Nellis’ world. There’s a playful irony at work in Tajnosti, in which Bittová, the famous singer, never sings, although her character’s life mightily aspires to the condition of music. Bittová’s simple honesty seems shocking after a steady diet of Hollywood histrionics. It’s astonishing work from a nonprofessional actor.
The supporting cast is equally strong. Roden gets a chance to reclaim his talent from the bottom of the Bestiář and Mr. Bean barrel, while Franěk is very powerful as Julie’s spurned lover. Nellis also laces Tajnosti with some wry comical performances from Anna Šišková, Igor Chmela and Sabina Remundová (whose acting family made up most of the cast of Výlet).
As the young musician Ivan, who owns the piano that Julie will find, Miloslav König is a discovery. Like Chmela, König is a company member of na Zábradlí (the theater also features prominently in the film), and is a young actor to watch. He and Bittová work well off each other, especially when they sit at the piano to honor the memory of Nina Simone, with König singing and playing her version of “Little Girl Blue,” which Simone interpolated into “Good King Wenceslas” (another nice irony).
If there’s a criticism, it is that Nellis occasionally overplays Julie’s musical reveries — moments when she suddenly imagines seeing the world around her as an elaborate dance. There’s a tango between two quarreling lovers on the middle of Vítězné náměstí in Dejvice that’s far too forced, though it does tie in with a better moment of tango toward the film’s conclusion. There is, however, a lovely scene where Ivan imagines he sees Julie dancing within his musical instrument shop while she’s chatting with a customer, a moment of Degas-like grace captured by Greičus’ camera.
Czech film is struggling at the moment, hardly producing the quality that it once did. What is worth seeking out? The films of Bohdan Sláma, Tomáš Vorel, Jan Hřebejk, Švankmajer, of course, and Alice Nellis. Tajnosti is a good place to start.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


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