By now, the dramatic roundelay should have
worn out its welcome. After all, since Arthur Schnitzler’s classic
"La Ronde" (made into a movie by Max Ophuls in the
1950s), who needs to see characters A, B, C, D, E and F, where
A sleeps with B who is married to C who has an affair with D
who is friends with E who once lived with F who has the hots
for A?
But Czech director David Ondricek has not tired of it. His latest
movie, "Loners" – playing at the BAM Rose Cinemas Feb.
1-7, inaugurating the 2002 BAMcinematek schedule – takes all
those pesky, lettered characters for one last ride, and the result
is a satisfying, occasionally touching comic melodrama, proving
there’s life in the old formula yet.
Ondricek, whose first feature "Whisper" garnered him
praise as a filmmaker to watch, collaborated with compatriot
Petr Zelenka on "Losers"; Zelenka’s screenplay is similar
to the one for "Buttoners," which he wrote for himself
to direct a few years ago. But "Buttoners" was disjointed
and stiff, with none of the coherence or charm of "Losers"
– presumably those are Ondricek’s contributions.
A bustling Prague at the millennium is the setting, and even
though it doesn’t overtly figure in the lives of the story’s
players, their malaise, confusion, and even occasional lunacy
certainly owe something to the dawn of a new era.
Ondricek introduces us to the characters in pairs and larger
groups before settling down to allow us to follow each and understand
their relationships with each other. That’s no mean feat, especially
when with persons as preciously eccentric as are these.
Hana (Jitka Schneiderova), although on the lookout for the perfect
guy, keeps settling for less, particularly Peter (Sasa Rarilov),
with whom she’s broken up but hopes to return. On the other hand,
Peter – a disk jockey who bores his listeners with endless replays
of Hana singing, laughing, etc. on tape – is getting friendly
with the foreign bartender Vesna (Labina Mitevska), unaware that
one person is dutifully listening to his self-pitying "All
Hana, all the time" radio show.
That person is Ondrej (Ivan Trojan), a successful, married surgeon
and father, who has an incurable crush on Hana, which she does
not reciprocate. A friend of Ondrej’s, Robert (Mikulas Kren)
is employed by a travel agency that visits the homes of ordinary
Czech citizens for its Japanese bus tours. Robert talks Hana’s
parents into allowing him the use of their house for one such
stop-off.
Robert and Vesna meet in a bar she’s working at while he’s there
with another woman. But for Vesna, a Macedonian immigrant looking
for her real father, a shared interest in UFOs sparks a friendship
with the stoner Jacob (Jiri Machacek), about to embark on a relationship
with Hana; but the joints he’s always smoking have caused him
to forget that he’s already got a girlfriend: she went off to
Germany for a month, which his friends dutifully point out.
It might all sound ludicrous, but believe me, this (and much
more, to be sure) plays much better onscreen than on the printed
page. Ondricek’s sure sense of pacing, knowing how long to stay
with each scene and how much information to give to ensure we
connect the seemingly disconnected dots that inform his sextet,
prevents "Loners" from straying too far afield and
turning into a similarly titled fiasco, "Losers."
Ondricek and Zelenka occasionally misstep. They underline certain
relationships too obviously, and one supposedly comic scene of
Hana returning to her parents’ house while in a particularly
foul mood, only to find a dozen Japanese tourists gathered around
the dining room table happily clicking their cameras as she,
mom and dad bitterly argue, is so badly conceived that it approaches
contempt. Ondricek also relies much too heavily on slow fades
to black, which retard the progress his characters and their
stories are making.
Overall, however, "Loners" clicks as an unpretentious
and humorous study of six young people who, although they really
have no clue about life, continue plugging away, trying to get
it right for once. Extremely well-acted from top to bottom (Jitka
Schneiderova, who looks like Cynthia Nixon’s equally charming
sister, is notably beguiling), David Ondricek’s film shrewdly
shows how his characters keep their heads up even when everything
seems to be falling apart around them.
That’s an important message to trumpet in these perilous times.
"Loners" plays Feb. 1-7 at
BAMcinematek (30 Lafayette Ave. at Ashland Place). Tickets are
$9. For screening times, visit www.bam.org
on the Web, or call (718) 636-4100.
