The Marbles

Colour, 35 mm
Czech Republic, 2008, 75 min
Section: Czech Films 2008-2009

Synopsis

The prologue of this collection of film stories sees children acting out their parts at a wedding: "newly-wed” Julinka won’t let her little "husband” Péťa go off and play with the other children. Three tales follow: teenager Angela fights a battle with her mother’s lover (the tale "Mother’s Angel”); the heroine of the story "Moral Imperative”  solicits the freedom and respectability of a young priest; and in "Funeral”  Boženka tyrannises her old, sick husband with her excessive anxiety, until she drives him literally "beyond the grave”. Debuting director Olga Dabrowská, who also wrote the script for her film, treats the theme of men manipulated by women. Signs of female egotism and hedonistic indulgence already appear in their childhood relationships and remain with them up until old age and death. In her paradoxical stories of women of all ages and backgrounds, the filmmaker demonstrates the mechanisms of human lives which can be frittered away with the abuse of such "incontrovertible” female weapons as tears, sex, emotional blackmail or self-sacrifice.

About the director

Olga Dabrowská (b. 1968) graduated in screenwriting and dramaturgy from Prague’s FAMU in 1996. She has worked for Czech Television as a director, screenwriter and script editor (e.g. story and screenplay for the TV film Cuckoos / Kukačky, dir. Zuzana Zemanová). She has directed or co-directed and written a series of documentaries and current affairs programmes. She was involved in Petr Zelenka’s directorial debut Buttoners (Knoflíkáři, 1997) where, in the tale entitled Civilisation Habits (Civilizační návyky), she also appeared with David Černý. She worked as script editor and assistant director on another of Petr Zelenka’s films, Mňága - Happy End (1996) and also teamed up with him to write the story and screenplay for the tragi-comedy Loners (Samotáři, 2000) by their contemporary David Ondříček. She was a producer on the film Cabriolet (2001) by director Marcel Bystroň. The Marbles (2008) is her feature-film debut.