Bored in Brno

Black and white, 35 mm
Czech Republic, 2003, 103 min
Section: Czech Films

Synopsis

This sad comedy about searching for love through sex takes place in the course of one day and one night in the “big little city” Brno. The lives of several characters are woven together, especially that of the slightly retarded twenty-seven-year-old Standa, who after a year of letter-writing prepares to spend his first night with the similarly afflicted Olga. Whilst the somewhat scared girl gathers experience from her girl friends, Standa is travelling from Bruntál to Brno accompanied by his younger but more experienced brother Jarda. Even he does not spend this night alone, nor do any of the others: the married actor Miroslav Norbacher; the  psychologist Vlasta living in the same house as Olga; the lonely Jaroslava, who is never lacking in cretins and whose new discovery – the masochistic owner of the affectionate bull terrier Richard – is just one more of them; and the journalist Jitka, who invites her girl friends to her flat for the evening. Also in play are the youths Honza and Pavel, who think of nothing but sex... On this night in Brno, are there really – as the TV serial Nešahej na plotnu claims – one hundred and fifty thousand couplings?

About the director

Vladimír Morávek is well-known as a theatre director who has to his credit a number of well-discussed productions at Klicpera Theatre in Hradec Králové. The controversial stage project evoked conflicting opinions, but the film, with which at the age of thirty-six he made his debut as a film director (at the same time as preparing a production of Romeo and Juliet for the National Theatre in Prague), had, on the contrary, an almost exclusively positive reception from both audiences and critics. The film won a number of awards (including the Grand Prix for the Best Film at the IFF in Bratislava, Czech Lions for Best Film, Diection, Actor, Script and Editing, and the Award of the Czech Film Critics). Morávek has won several nominations for the Alfréd Radok Award in the theatre and a number of awards as a documentary filmmaker (he has made more than 70 short television documentaries).