You Kiss Like God

Colour, 35 mm
Czech Republic, 2008, 115 min
Section: Czech Films 2008-2009

Synopsis

Aging Helena Altmanová teaches French at secondary school. She’s popular among the pupils and gets on well with her colleagues. Her private life, however, bears no resemblance to her well-ordered career. To add to the problems troubling her large family (grandma Alžběta’s late romance or her incorrigible son Adam’s marital altercations), she is still sharing her home with her ex-husband Karel, who refuses to leave their joint flat, even now the divorce is through. Helena’s relationship with František, a doctor working for the emergency services, instead of giving her fresh hope, just makes her situation worse: her lover is married. A man between two women and a woman between two men – a set of circumstances driven by folly, self-delusion and dreams, to which the loved, the unloved and the jealous ultimately surrender… "You only get one life and it’s up to you how you live it, how you use this unique opportunity,” says Marie Poledňáková, the director of the comedy, one of the most successful Czech films in recent years.

About the director

Marie Poledňáková (b. 1941, Strakonice) has made several successful television and feature films which won a number of awards at domestic and foreign festivals. These include two comedies How to Pull out a Whale’s Tooth (Jak vytrhnout velrybě stoličku, 1977) and How to Get Daddy into a Fix (Jak dostat tatínka do polepšovny, 1978 – Best Screenplay and Director at the International Festival in Monte Carlo). In 1982 she made the hit comedy You Make the World Fun (S tebou mě baví svět), which won Czech Comedy of the Century in 1998 and a Special Award at the Gijón IFF in 1983. In 2000 young audiences all over the CR voted to award the film the Golden Apple for the most successful children’s film of the century. This was followed by the romantic comedy Powerplay (Zkrocení zlého muže, 1986) and the children’s story Twins at the Zoo (Dva lidi v ZOO, 1989). She returned to film direction with the comedy Taming Crocodiles (Jak se krotí krokodýli, 2006), loosely following on from her two previous "dad” comedies.