BEAUTY IN TROUBLE
2006 English subtitles
Jan Hrebejk_
Czech Republic 110 minutes_
Director: Jan Hrebejk_
Producer: Ondrej Trojan_is
Screenplay: Petr Jarchovsky_
Photography: Jan Malír
Cast:
Anna Geislerová
Marcela
Roman Luknár
Jarda (Marcela's Husband)
Jana Brejchová
Marcela's Mother
Jirí Schmitzer
Uncle Richie
Josef Abrhám
Evzen Benes (knight in shining armor)
Beauty in Trouble is:
“a smart situation comedy that contrasts old and new Czecho-no-Slovakias... The title comes from a Robert Graves poem and the soundtrack from Once’s busker-songwriter Glen Hansard.”_— Harlan Jacobson. The story line is a woman Marcela ( A_a Geislerová ) who is –forced to chose between two men, one whom she loves with her intellect, the other, her husband (A_a Geislerová) –who stimulates and fulfills her sexual strivings.
Beauty in Trouble is a delightful film with characters vividly drawn who come from a world very similar in class and kind as the people found in a Coen brother films. such as in Fargo 1996.
The characters who represent the old republic speak crudely but honestly and their love is often expressed in terms with little endearment. They are funny, pathetic, and yet…. .
This film is about character, ethics, the true and honest way people can and should act towards one another. What is paramount is not sex, as stated in the promotional material. It is love and the conflict between the passion that the body craves and the love that is not passionate but full, rich and nurturing for the mind and soul. It is the conflict delineated in William Somerset Maugham's book Of Human Bondage, where, for those who read the book or saw the movie, Mildred, the waitress with whom the intellectual author is obsessed, is the essence of love and hate, while intellectual women are simply there for stimulation of the mind. Nothing passionate about that!
Beauty in Trouble has clear readable subtitles with only one blatant error “there “ was put on the screen when it should have read “they’re”.
But I could read it all, plenty of time afforded the slow reader and the film’s shots were effected without undo prolongation of a facial image.. I never got tired of looking at one actor or another and there were bodies to be seen, all the way from head to foot, not truncated at the shoulders or waist.
It has great dialogue and enjoyable images of an old lady and a sleazy older man and even the “knight in shinning armor “ who comes to save the day, is overdrawn to the point of almost ridiculous but stops right at the moment when he is believable and enviable for his solid integrity; a quality so rarely put on the screen for us to imitate and absorb as a goal of our own. Simply stated, just because you are a good person does not mean you are weak or easily manipulated.
The music is all the rave. If you see the film for nothing more than the music, you will not be disappointed.
Do see, Beauty in Trouble. Not for the sex particularly but for the plot, the resolution of conflicts we have all experienced in one form or another, and for the multimedia approach of great music, a wonderful poem as its theme, suburb acting, wonderufly drawn characters and dialogue that flows so naturally.
Linda Zises
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