Rozmarné léto

I'm still trying to get through the backlog of foreign films I've got on my DVR, although I have a feeling a reasonable number of them are going to expire before I get around to watching them or writing up the reviews. Once again, with that in mind, I watched a Czech film, not having done a review on a Czech film in a while: Capricious Summer.

It's early summer in a small village in southern Moravia. The village had some sort of riverside resort that people used to come to back in the day, before the war and then the Communist takeover. So now there's still a lake, a dock for swimmers to climb into the water, and a changing area, but not all that much else. A group of middle-aged men who are locals spend their days idling their time away there, to the point that you might wonder how any of them live. Except that it turns out that one, Roch, is the local parish priest; Hugo is a retired army major; and the third, Antonín, runs the place if you will with his wife Kateřina. But for the most part all they do is swim and talk.

That is, until the village is shaken up a bit by a traveling circus. Or, more precisely, a one-wagon circus act of Arnoštek (director Jiří Menzel doing some acting here) who is part magician, part tightrope walker and his assistant Anna. Arnoštek does tricks on the high wire in exchange for donations from the people, taken by Anna. I suppose for one night seeing the tightrope walker might be interesting in this sort of small village that doesn't get much of interest coming to it any more, but the wagon stays for more than one night. And in any case, Anna is more interesting than Arnoštek because she's actually good-looking.

Somehow Anna winds up in the river, and Antonín rescues her. He's already been revealed to have a past with women and that he basically drove every other man away from Kateřina, leading to an unhappy marriage. With that in mind, it's unsurprising that Antonín winds up sleeping with Anna, but also getting caught by Kateřina.

The circus act stays in the village a few more days, at least until some old man gets fed up with it and tries to warn Arnoštek about the danger of being up on the high wire. And if Arnoštek won't listen, then the old guy will make him listen by sabotaging the act. In any case, the act being in the village for multiple days gives each of the other two men the chance to spend a little time with Anna, even if this is going to cause problems for each of them too.

Capricious Summer is the movie Jiří Menzel made following Closely Watched Trains, a movie that I think I stated before that I don't find as good as a lot of other people do. I have similar issues with Capricious Summer, although at least in this case it's due in part to the story really being as meandering as the river that brings the men together. The color cinematography of a backwater (and, thanks to Communist misrule, decrepit) Czech village is nice to look at, but it doesn't really save a mediocre story. Still, as always, watch and judge for yourself.