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'Beauty in Trouble': Young mother moves on in flood of emotion
Young mother moves on in flood of emotion
BY JEAN WESTMOORE
- News Staff Reviewer
Updated: 07/25/08 8:32 AM
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- Ana Geislerova, left, plays Marcela with her two children in “Beauty in Trouble.”
“Beauty in Trouble,” billed as a “dramedy” from Czech filmmaker Jan Hrebejk, is a vivid film of richly drawn characters and complicated relationships.
Inspired by a Robert Graves poem about a woman who flees an abusive situation for a wealthy older man, it’s set in Prague after the floods of 2002. Dreary scenes of post-Iron Curtain Prague offer a sharp contrast to the sunny landscape of Tuscany, a difference that highlights the movie’s theme of the ruinous and cleansing power of water.
BEAUTY IN TROUBLE
★★★ 1/2
STARRING: Ana Geislerova, Jana Brejchova, Josef Abrham, Roman Lukna and Jiri Schmitzer DIRECTOR: Jan Hrebejk
RUNNING TIME: 110minutes RATING: Unrated, but contains strong sexuality, profanity and adult themes.
THE LOWDOWN: A youngwoman has to choose between her tough husband and a wealthy older man. In Czech with English subtitles.
Ana Geislerova is simply stunning as Marcela, an attractive young mother of two who works as a travel agent. Her rough husband, Jarda, runs a car theft ring and chop shop in the garage. The family was ruined financially by the floods, and they are struggling to get by, their young son Kuba sickened by the mold in the house and suffering from asthma.
The marriage has fallen apart, but an animal attraction binds the two together; the film contains three short, but graphic, sex scenes.
Marcela leaves her husband and moves with the children into her mother’s crowded apartment, where her creepy stepfather Risa practices psychological warfare against both her and the kids. She meets the handsome, wealthy and older Evzen Benes when her husband steals his car and is sent to prison. After some initial reluctance, she accepts Benes’ invitation to stay at his home in Prague, then takes the kids to stay with him at his Tuscan villa.
A subplot involving the house Benes owns in Prague offers an interesting exploration of the corruption and grasping venality of the post-communist era. There are other echoes of the legacy of the Cold War as Risa taunts Marcela’s mother-in-law about her former communist orthodoxy, now transformed into evangelical Christian judgments, and mocks Benes for the menu at the fancy restaurant he treats the family to.
To hammer home the point of the title, Czech folk singer Raduza sings Graves’ “Beauty in Trouble” poem for the prison inmates. The odd soundtrack of piano and folk music includes Glen Hansard’s Oscar-winning song “Falling Slowly” from “Once,” which will strike anyone who admired “Once” as weirdly out of place here.
Still, this is a film that gets subtle details right, whether it’s Jarda keeping his black socks on while he’s having sex or Kuba watching a monster video on TV while a much scarier real-life monster torments him from the living room couch.
One can just imagine the cliched mess Hollywood would make of such a story. The screenplay from Hrebejk and Petr Jarchovsky (who also collaborated on “Divided We Fall”) contains all the interesting shades of gray. The kindly Benes is capable of swift anger. Jarda is capable of some generosity of spirit. Even the monstrous Risa is capable of tears.•
