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| 2005 NYFF Films Introduction Good Night, and Good Luck Regular Lovers The Death of Mr. Lazarescu Methadonia L'Enfant (The Child) Bubble The Squid and the Whale I Am Capote Something Like Happiness Sympathy for Lady Vengeance Manderlay Tale of Cinema Breakfast on Pluto Through the Forest The President's Last Bang Who's Camus Anyway? Three Times Paradise Now Tristram Shandy Gabrielle The Sun The Passenger Cache (Hidden) | Something Like
Happiness Bodhan Slama, Czech Rep., 2005, 102 min.  Moni (Tatiana Vilhelmova) is torn between her boyfriend whošs gone to work in America and the soulful Tonik (Pavel Liska) who hasnšt much ambition but is adorable and helps her care for crazy Dashašs (Ana Glislerovašs) two little kids at his auntiešs big beat-up farmhouse on the edge of an encroaching chemical factory near some unspecified small Czech industrial city. Auntie dies. Moni comes back from the USA looking for Tonik, and hešs gone. End of story. Slama excels at showing the texture of these working class peoplešs lives -- the puke, the molding refrigerator contents, the goats assembling by the new Jacuzzi. Few films feel as lived in as this one. And hešs got some theatrical moments too, particularly when Dashašs acting up, which is every time shešs onscreen. This is like visiting some Czech urban version of a late-Sixties Oregon seacoast commune. The trouble is the whole is a bit less than the sum of the parts, but the funkily endearing Tonik reminds one of Amalric, and hence of Duplechinšs Rois et reine, and if you see this as a down-market Slavic version of Duplechinšs rich kind of excess (edited down to a trim but chock-full hour and forty minutes), you may like it. Nothing seems faked, including Dashašs kidsš wailing misery when chastised or the little boyšs dumbstruck awe when told the driftwood limbs outside a rowboat are the fingers of a troll. But Slama is the kind of artist whošs so in love with his materials they overwhelm his work. (Chris Knipp) |
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