THE BUTTONERS (Czech, in Czech and English)
A review by Mark R. Leeper in bullet-list form
from the Toronto Internation Film Festival
CAPSULE: A series of comedy sketches inter-related dealing with absurd uses of science, strange sexual perversions, marital infidelity, etc. The result is occasionally funny, but much more often the pieces just seem to fall flat. It could be, however, that some of the humor has been lost in the translation. Rating: 3 (0 to 10), -1 (-4 to +4)
- Made for Czech television. - Written and directed by Petr Zelenka. - Several inter-related skits: Japanese learn to swear in the final hours before the Hiroshima bomb is dropped while the bomber crew swears a blue streak, a cab driver has two consecutive set of passengers who want to use the cab for sex, two pairs of prospective in-laws meet each other and discover each other's perversions, a couple plays odd games near a railroad track, a laid-off railroad employee and his wife discuss a plan to send sperm into space, the pilot of the Enola Gay is resurrected by seance, etc. - Props from one skit show up in the next, then turn out to be connections between skits. - Historically inaccurate about the bombing of Hiroshima. - There are sufficient links between the segments to put them in some chronological order, much like PULP FICTION. - Very negative on United States and the decision to use the bomb without examining the historic alternatives. - The film has a sort of cult following in Czech Republic, much like Monty Python over here. It is unlikely to be seen in the US. - Some of the concepts are very strange including a party of two bourgeois couples who each have their own weird perversion. - The structure is more interesting than the content.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1998 Mark R. Leeper
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