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Acting up

Two young Czechs transcend the limitations of their director
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By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
October 8th, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Love on the rocks. A brief moment of mirth in a self-pitying film.
Děti noci


Directed by Michaela Pavlátová
With Martha Issová, Jiří Mádl, Jan Dolanský, David Novotný, Igor Chmela and Lenka Termerová
Your final verdict on the success of Michaela Pavlátová’s new Czech film, Děti noci (playing with English subtitles at select cinemas through the end of the month), may very well hinge on your age. Teens and twentysomethings longing for a competent dose of youthful angst will not be disappointed, though anyone who has graduated into their 30s may find himself very impatient with the film’s protagonist.
Pavlátová is best-known as a director of animation. Her last piece, the very clever Karneval zvířat (Carnival of Animals), played in the Czech Republic as a short subject before John Cameron Mitchell’s brave, if flawed, film on contemporary sexuality, Shortbus.
Karneval zvířat was a lighthearted preface to Mitchell’s theme: a series of humorous, erotic vignettes played out to the music of Camille Saint-Saens.
Much like Jan Švankmajer’s shift from pure animation to more live-action, it was exciting to ponder what Pavlátová might accomplish in the same move based on her past work. The result is unsatisfying.
Ofka (Martha Issová) is a young woman at loose ends. She’s a talented artist who decided against college and has spent her few years out of school floating through life. She continues to live with her parents, remains in a long-term relationship with a loutish boyfriend, Miro (Jan Dolanský), and makes pocket money by working late at her brother-in-law’s nonstop potraviny in Karlín, where most of the film’s action takes place.
When Ofka disovers that Miro is cruelly having an affair behind her back with her own best friend, her world shatters. Where she was formerly simply listless, she now becomes morose. And in short order everything in her life begins to change: Her parents move house, the potraviny is robbed and she’s slightly injured, and her art no longer adequately covers the cracks in her life.
To communicate this state of upheaval, we’re dragged along, scene upon scene, with Ofka taking long, teary walks through the urban squalor and decay of backstreet Karlín. When not treating herself to cathartic screams in pedestrian underpasses, we find her in bed paralyzed with ennui. These moments of despair and inaction are then garnished with episodes of recklessness, where Ofka places herself in questionable situations, usually in the company of dodgy men.
The one constant in her life is her childhood friend Uber (Jiří Mádl), a charming goof who spends his free time rummaging through dumpsters for castoff treasures, and who, ever so typically, suffers silently from an unrequited love for Ofka.
Pavlátová does an excellent job of creating a sense of place — here the drab dowdiness of Karlín’s residential streets, which all seem to lead past flyovers to dismal moorings along the Vltava. It’s the perfect backdrop for a bout of internal frustration.
The problem, however, lies in not being able to fully care for Ofka’s plight, which is primarily driven by self-indulgence. One dramatic lesson that Pavlátová and her screenwriter, Irene Hejdová, seem not to have learned is that self-pity doesn’t play. It’s a boring motive to hang a character on. And yet Ofka is little but self-pitying. Teens in the audience will undoubtedly rally to her side when her equally feckless father accuses her of being lazy and spoiled, but anyone past the age of sneaking cigarettes will have wished dad had added a swift boot to his outburst.
That we are capable of summoning any feeling for Ofka is due to the performance of Issová, one of the most interesting young actors working in Czech theater and film. There’s an innate soulfulness Issová possesses that manages to give breath to an otherwise stillborn character.
More surprising is the performance of Mádl, a young actor I’ve never been able to bear. The problem with Mádl, other than his past mugging and smugness before the camera (see Tomáš Vorel’s uniquely inept Gympl), is that he’s simply too odd-looking for the teen heartthrob roles he’s historically been consigned to.
Mádl suddenly came to life in a small role in Jakubisko’s Bathory, where he played a worldless, earnest and confused young monk (a replica of Christian Slater’s character in The Name of the Rose). In Děti noci, his character, Uber, is equally otherworldly. He’s shy but possesses a full and fearless inner life that allows him to revel in wearing tossed hats and clothes that more socially conscious teens would avoid for fear of damaging their standing in the pack. Mádl’s Uber is wonderfully free of such considerations, another welcome break from the young actor’s previous roles.
Both Mádl and Issová won the acting honors at this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, and although both deserve recognition for their very strong work in Děti noci, the prize seems more a celebration of an actor’s ability to transcend a director and writer’s limitations (best evinced in this film’s simplistic ending).
Now that Mádl has found his footing, and Issová continues to grow in stature as an actress, it will be interesting to see how the two are allowed to develop within the ever-more parochial Czech film world.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


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