The House - Dum

Cecil says: When I saw they were showing a Czech film at the Glasgow Film Theatre the other day, I was in two minds. I love the Glasgow Film Theatre and try to go whenever I’m up that way, but I had had a few bad experiences with Czech cinema in the past: weirdly-surreal animations or stupidly-comical farce humour.

Luckily, The House was neither of these. It was actually a fairly dour, real-life drama about an old bloke who has spent decades building two houses for his two daughters. Trouble is, the house he almost finished was to go to a daughter he then disowned because she went off with a ne’er-do-well; and he has co-opted his younger daughter into helping him build the house she doesn’t really want because she has romantic visions of better things away from her small-town Czech Republic life.

It’s not a barrel of laughs, this film. But the story keeps things flowing nicely, and the characters are all quite engaging in their different ways.

The young English teacher who arrives in school and ends up having an affair with younger daughter is slightly unbelievable, or is his character just a bit over-acted? He has about as much charisma as Iain Duncan-Smith on a bad day, but I guess for a teenage girl character like Eva he can appear like a romantic way out of small-town living. When things go wrong, though, his hang-dog look just felt a bit too like a caricature, something Scooby-Doo might do.

And would he really let himself be caught in a clinch with a teenage pupil while they’re both in the staff room? I don’t know. When I was a teacher many many years ago, there was a scandal when two of the teachers were caught in flagrante in the stationery cupboard one day, so I guess these things do happen.

And it was only the odd weakness in the plot that made me think, ‘no’. On the whole, this was a good film about family break-ups, reconciliation, dreams and realities.

It might even make me look on Czech cinema more positively, too.

***

Bea says: Being a big old softy, I was somewhat concerned that this film would be rather sad when I read the synopsis prior to going (father engaged in futile business of building houses for daughters, one of whom had left to an unsuitable marriage, one of whom couldn’t wait to escape their village life in the Czech Republic).

But in fact it was charming – poignant, tender, and a very astute exploration of family life, marriage, youth and age.  

Beautifully constructed, written (and translated), and acted it left me with the warm feeling that, sometimes, good things do happen, despite all the rest.

***.5