Momentous occasions such because the sale of the household residence, a younger man’s popping out to his household, or the staging of a drag present in a small city seem to be the right elements for an intensely dramatic and conflicting movie. However in his fourth function “Chica Checa,” premiering within the Crystal Globe competitors of the Karlovy Range Worldwide Movie Competition, younger Czech director Šimon Holý appears as a substitute decided to decrease the temperature as a lot as doable, creating an pleasant comedy-drama the place there is no such thing as a doubt that every part will work out ultimately.
Regardless of the movie’s competition profile, it’s subsequently greatest approached not as an arthouse proposition, however as a business movie geared toward common audiences and geared toward native audiences, albeit with barely extra daring subject material than most titles of its ilk. However even from this explicit perspective, Holý’s movie stays an unconvincing work, too clumsy each formally and thematically to go away a lot of an impression.
Zdena (Pavla Tomicová) is a middle-aged girl dwelling alone in a pretty big home in a Czech village and spending most of her time at her sick mom’s bedside in hospital. In certainly one of many small however nagging inconsistencies, characters repeatedly reference her isolation and reluctance to socialize since her husband’s demise a number of years in the past – regardless of the movie opening on Zdena at a ball and later attending a home get together.
This sense of eager to make a film is in all places, from the unflattering and garish television-level costume designs, to the inexplicable use of a large lens on a number of random events. Nevertheless, it’s on the stage of the narration itself that that is most palpable. Potential sources of pressure are launched in such a contrived and contrived method, to current such apparent and legitimate factors, that the movie, in such moments, involves resemble an academic video.
Shortly after receiving a suggestion to promote the household residence to a rich girl within the metropolis, Zdena receives a uncommon and prolonged go to from her grownup son, Lukáš (Jan Cina), who lives in France. One night, whereas they’re watching tv collectively, she makes use of a homophobic slur, prompting Lukáš to come back out as homosexual and inform her that he works as a drag queen: a traditional instance of a coming-out story, full with the mom’s tearful response, now in illustrated type.
But when each characters get up the subsequent day, they each instantly recuperate from the earlier evening’s hurtful argument. On the one hand, such a straightforward decision comes throughout as lazy writing. However there’s additionally in “Chica Checa” a recurring suggestion that persons are too good and too cheap for conflicts to essentially final. This naive standpoint may work effectively in a extra finely crafted confection, the place clichés develop into a part of the enjoyable. The “Chica Checa” generally guarantees exactly this type of easy pleasure, however it’s too uneven for it to work.
Whereas counting on established tropes for its story and characters, their circulate is interrupted by inconsistencies and clumsy errors. One explicit sequence, the place Lukáš throws a tantrum as a result of his mom is caught up to now, seems out of nowhere, with the only real obvious objective of injecting a really small dose of battle – quickly to be resolved – into a movie that threatens to flatten out.
There’s a larger drawback right here, nonetheless. In its relentless positivity, “Chica Checa” may very well be seen as an try and normalize, by constructive illustration, existence and sexualities which will appear abhorrent to older generations like Zdena’s. However there’s a very positive line between this laudable impulse and the flippant concept that maternal love will at all times trump deep-rooted intolerance. The movie attracts a lot of its light humor from varied moments the place Zdena has the braveness (!) to inform an acquaintance that her son has a boyfriend – however it’s cheap to surprise what would possibly occur if she met somebody who did not reply with a innocent little quip.
This awkwardness round homophobia is discovered within the tonal indecision of the movie. As a result of it’s Zdena’s sunny character that masks each crack and resolves each battle in “Chica Checa,” it’s Tomicová’s responsibility to make her optimism credible. The actor opts for an intensely expressive efficiency, mixing wide-eyed surprise and maternal gentleness in a method that pulls the movie towards artifice. However Cina’s naturalistic flip as Lukáš and the a lot greater stakes for his character floor the movie in some semblance of actuality. The friction between the 2 registers produces solely a sense of disjointed awkwardness; maybe a much less critical and extra outlandish strategy may have achieved this troublesome mixture.