Kristian and Frances

I have been terrible with the blog recently but there's so much going on that I haven't felt the urge to write about things. It is a problem but like some people say, just getting on with life is sometimes good. And we've been keeping in touch with family in other ways.

We've been in Edinburgh for the last week I think, now. Kristian has already got a job (yep! for 3 months), I've had two recruitment agency registrations and have another one lined up and a potential job as well with one of them, I just have to prove my typing skills and then they'll consider me properly. So we'll see. Meantime, everyone send their congratulations to K, who GOT A JOB WITHOUT APPLYING FOR A SINGLE POSITION. No kidding. I'm feeling a bit insulted right now to be honest, but I'm happy that we have a better financial position of course, and that things are looking manageable.

Last night we went to meet a guy and see his spare room in his flat. I don't think he was really planning on renting to a couple, but he seemed to think we were okay, and he was a very nice guy, a dentist from Glasgow. My only reservation was that he was the kind of guy who obviously takes real pride in his surroundings, his flat was all clear glass and white sheets and so forth. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't mean neat and clean, I mean DENTIST neat and clean. And he hadn't heard of David Lynch! So we liked the place a lot, but I think we'll keep looking. Now that K has a job we're in a better position to rent our own place as well, and it would only cost a little more (the place was pretty expensive as well). That morning we'd seen another place in Leith (think Newtown before it was gentrified) which was a decent room but the rest of the flat seemed to be covered in unwashed plates and other paraphernalia....

So Edinburgh is lovely, we're optimistic, and I have a new haircut I am not ready to show to anyone back home just yet! But K reckons he likes it. The trip up to Edinburgh from London was great, and it's a shame we didn't have the car for longer, but it sure is expensive here. We're struggling to keep to the budget, and in fact for the first week here it got completely blown (but we were buying stuff for job interviews and getting haircuts and so on).

Starting with some photos!

More, bigger and better ones at http://www.flickr.com/photos/colllapse/, so go there alright?

Festival forecourt

Parks and gardens

KV at night

The route we took on our big walk:

That abandoned Goethe place:

Some woodsy wildflowers

K frollicking among some ruins:

Spectacular vistas

Morbid antics

Don't get too excited, it's his son.

K molests the dead.

Day 4

Woke to driving rain and steam rising from places all over town. In fact there is always steam rising from strange places here. Last night we arrived home to a steaming doorstep! So we walked into town through the rain, bought breakfast and mcdonalds coffees so we could eat our breakfast under their shelter, and went to a cafe for teas and to write our diaries. Still raining. Bought umbrellas, 69 crowns, mine already leaking.

MOVIE 7 - BRETISLAV POJAR FILMS II

Actually a collection of short films by animator Bretislav Pojar. This is the kind of thing I love the Czech Republic most for, the aesthetic of alchemistry and fairy tales but also a ribald, almost viciously mediaeval sense of humour. All the movies are children's movies, the kind of animations I would have loved as a kid, while maybe also being spooked by them a bit (I was spooked by a lot of things). In fact I imagine a lot of the audience were Czechs who had watched the films on tv as children, by the way they clapped and cheered as different little screens came up. I imagined they were experiencing the same kind of feeling/nostalgia I get when I see or remember the Mysterious Cities of Gold, or the Dark Crystal, or any number of slightly surreal children's shows I used to watch. In fact, B. Pojar's films reminded me of animations like the drawing of a line which was animated by a disembodied hand, and those clay men who rolled around in ball shapes and turned into different creatures / objects to have nonsense fights and dialogues.

MOVIE 8 - KHOONBAZI, IRAN

The token Iranian film - there's always one. This one is kind of a standard junkie film except that it takes place in a totalitarian regime and doesn't glamourise or glorify heroin. In fact it seems like there's not a pleasant/enjoyable heroin-related experience for the character at all, in contrast with most heroin movies which portray bliss ad nauseum, followed by the obligatory OD scene and/or the going cold turkey horrors interlude. It's shot in black and white, quite beautifully filmed, and the drug addicted girl is probably the most accurate portrayal of a drug addict I've seen - it's sympathetic to her desire to escape without being at all sympathetic to her character, which is pretty much demanding and selfish. She uses emotional blackmail against her mother, and plays her divorced parents off of each other in order to find one last hit over and over again and to delay coming clean (which she has to do before her fiance comes to visit her in Iran from Canada and to take her away).

MOVIE 9 - GUE-MOOL, SOUTH KOREA

A series of awkward and vaguely humiliating experiences during the day had left my nerves a bit frayed. Then we had to wait almost 6 hours til the next movie and there's only so many things you can do in such miserable weather, so by the time Gue-Mool/The Host started I was a bit over the whole midnight movie deal.

Now, one thing about the KV movie fest is that a) it is very affordable, and b) there are a few ways for people to see movies free of charge as well. Five minutes before a session starts, the ushers check for unoccupied seats and if there are some then they let in some people who are queueing outside without tickets, so they see the movie for free. K and I have started affectionately calling these people "the vultures". But midnight movies are a particular target for vultures (midnite vultures!) because they're on so late that they don't sell out so fast, and because people know this they won't bother buying tickets if they know they're likely to get in for free. I think the affordability/free options is what makes Karlovy Vary so great, and of course is the reason why the audience is so comparatively young - Sydney Film Fest is way out of the league of most student budgets, it certainly was when I was at university - I could afford to see maybe 2 or 3 movies max at $15 a pop. But anyway, all that aside, the midnight movie thing seems to attract a strange kind of vulturish, carnivalesque audience that I don't quite understand.

First of all we had 2 free seats behind us, so two drunk vultures sat beside us. All through the movie they hooted, screamed and laughed in the fakest, loudest, most exaggerated way possible while slapping the chairs and drumming their feet. While incredibly annoying and distracting, that wasn't the worst thing about them - they STANK. I had no idea it was possible for human beings to smell so bad, and I am rarely ever bothered by BO or anything like that. I'm not sensitive to it, really. But these people smelt like they'd been chain-smoking and pot-smoking and drinking Becherovka for five days straight, sleeping on their own vomit, sweating nicotine and sweet alcohol stench and THC and not showering at all for that whole time. The only thing I can compare it to is maybe the collective stench of beer and sweat and mud and smoke and marijuana at the end of the Big Day Out or similar, except that I secretly like that smell.

But anyway, even if I had had two quiet sweet young things smelling of roses beside me, I think I would have still found the experience a bit strange.

Gue-Mool/The Host is a B-grade Korean creature feature. Although it is basically a straightforward horror flick, and not amazingly good, it's not of the so-bad-it's-funny variety. If it's funny it's because it's half a comedy, but the other half is actually a suspenseful, reasonable sophisticated horror. In that way it's a bit of a hybrid. It's Korean and if the Koreans do anything well in horror, it's the quiet, suspenseful moment in which you can almost smell the fear, the moment becomes icy and taut and epic. This is what I love about Korean horrors, even if you can generally walk through the holes in the plot.

However, the audience around me, and not just the moronic vultures on my left, committed so many crimes of interpretation I was completely lost for words. They laughed and laughed and laughed, at every slightly B-grade piece of acting, intentional or not, they laughed. In the monster-giving-chase moments, they laughed. In the silent, fucking suspenseful moments, they laughed. And not even the genuine laughter of enjoyment, but the forced, fake laughter of I-don't-know-what, ostentation. Their laughter was nothing but performance, carnival laughter.

Oh, but the jokes, the comedy, the little political asides and wordplay (which seemed to translate from Korean to English quite well) were completely lost, the auditorium was silent. I've never seen a movie where the audience failed to cooperate with its conventions to this extent. And the movie was deflated, ruined. There's no suspense without silence, and no comedy without laughter. I just don't understand.

Obviously I take my horror flicks far too seriously, but K and I were both too busy fantasising about doing violence to our neighbours to actually enjoy the movie. Afterwards we laughed about trying to explain to the Foreign Police.

"You killed him for laughing? A bit extreme, isn't it?"
"Oh, but you should have heard him!"
"Where I come from, that kind of thing wouldn't be tolerated!"

It's funny, but I think it's true. If those two shunts had been in an Australian cinema, someone would have told them to pipe down within a couple of minutes, and then about 5 other people would have joined in, and if they hadn't shut up, 10 people would have shouted them down, and someone's Dad would have helped the usher escort them from the theatre. Instead, the audience cheered them and clapped them, and echoed their laughter. And I do know that we were not the only ones bothered by them, as several people couldn't stand the stench and moved to the sides of the theatre. An usher came to speak to them, but was ignored. Where's the solidarity? They even went out once and were let back in - wtf? Do the Czechs lack respect for authority to the extent that can't even exercise it? It was all very bizarre.

Postscript: I am over this little episode now, and I even came to understand and enjoy the whole midnight movies communal experience which seemed to be a bit of a *happening* in itself, maybe not to do with the movie at all, but I decided to type out my vitriolic initial reaction anyway to record the power of culture shock! Fun times. Still I am relieved that we didn't end up seeing "Fido" in this context, because I would hate to have a really awesome "serious" (by that I don't necessarily mean not-funny, you understand) horror movie ruined like this.

DAY 5

Movie 10 - Dolina, HUNGARY

Dolina had a really wonderful visual aesthetic and texture, all dark browns and blue lighting. An allegory about a polluted town with polluted politics, is apparently a criticism by the director of post-communist culture in countries like Hungary (his own country) but also the Czech Republic and Poland, and was also a movie about the nature of totalitarian regimes in general and their effect on culture (during AND after).

From an interview in Festival Daily (English supplement) with director Zoltan Komondi:

"I was hugely influenced by the report of a French journalist, who - wearing a chador as a disguise - travelled through Afghanistan when the mullahs were in power. He vividly demonstrates the senseless madness and the illogical nature of power which at the time was apparent in Afghanistan's every day life, right down to the smallest events. Living under such terror leaves its traces in people's nature - the individual character, the way of thinking and human behaviour gets entirely absorbed and eventually incorporated by it. [...] Although we have been living under democracy for 18 years now, our instinctive basic reactions in every day life are nevertheless the same as if we were still living under a similar form of dictatorship."

Obviously these are themes close to my heart so I was really excited to see it. Perhaps it succeeded too well in portraying a culture devoid of respect for human dignity or altruism sans ulterior motives, because it was quite cold and delivered and lacking in emotional tension or sense of fear. But it was still interesting in the way it depicted totalitarianism (although it had not existed previously) as somehow a default reality, as somehow ordinary or to be expected, now it was here. Which reminds me of Zizek's idea of the once seemingly impossible becoming suddenly the only possible reality (from Iraq: the Borrowed Kettle), a dangerously compliant mentality that allows the impossible to occur (such as the war on Iraq/war on terror which was immediately absorbed (by us) into banal reality even though it would have seemed impossible only months earlier. A terrifying prospect. Would we have imagined any of this at the end of the Clinton era? Our reality and our political systems and culture are fragile and immensely corruptible, so much more than we realise. Another example is each audacious move made by the Howard govt., making the impossible possible and eroding the limits of our national im/morality. I think this is what Dolina means, and totalitarianism exists in spite of the ridiculousness of Dolina's leaders, just as our inter/national politics are corrupted although our leaders are ridiculous. The fact that John Howard and George Bush are figures of fun makes them only more dangerousl. And a banality, a lack of fear, but a need to survive by acting pragmatically within an immoral system, is a perfect totality.

An example from the movie is when a couple is kicked out of their flat onto the street in one of the first scenes and their reaction is "There is nothing we can do about it now, this is the way things are, things have changed, we can get our flat back later" and then they compliantly leave. Of course they never get their flat back, and they are progressively driven out of life. Incidentally they are the only two characters driven by morality and love rather than pragmatism or self-interest. the main character, the would-be hero Gabriel, who does help people in the town, is ultimately driven only by his need to survive and not incur the wrath of his mad brother, and also his desire to possess Natalia, V?'s wife, is the only reason why he helps him. When it comes to the crunch he throws people to the authorities in order to save himself.

So in summary Dolina didn't quite live up to its promise but was interesting because of what it tried to say.

Movie 11 - Podo-namulul be-a-ra, SOUTH KOREA

I had to look this one up cause I couldn't remember the 2nd movie for the day. That's because it's a quiet, unassuming, slow and gentle Korean film about a priest to be struggling with his faith. It's quite visually beautiful and clear and tender and gracefully told, and as always it seems with Korean films there's an element of the supernatural involved, which is sentimental without being tacky. Let's just hope they don't remake it with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves (as with Il Mare/ The Lake House)

Movie 12 - Black Sheep, NEW ZEALAND

I was nervous about this one because of the Midnite Vultures (not the Beck album) and sure enough one of the same guys vultured the seat next to us, although smelling somewhat better (I only caught a whiff or two). So as the movie started I was gritting my teeth and well ready to walk out of there, but I guess he was less drunk and maybe too hungover to be an arse. And Black Sheep seemed to be way more in keeping with the mood of the midnite vultures, and I enjoyed it a lot, maybe even more in the celebratory joyous spirit of the audience, because it was just the kind of schlocky laugh-a-minute zombie movie that deserves hearty laughter. The laughter also seemed a lot less forced than the previous night. It was great, and we walked out of there with big grings on our faces, in contrast to the night before. Much fun. I was happy to have been a part of it, a communal experience of fun gore and bad taste. I still think we got a few jokes that the Czechs didn't get through, especially jokes involving references to intimate relations with sheep. Also makes me realise how close Australian and NZ culture is, with the Maori influence being an obvious variable.

I think Black Sheep is and should be a hit. It outshines Undead (a similar low budget Bad-Taste-inspired Australian zombie movie) by a long way.

DAY 6

Movie 13 - Hranice/Marta, CZECH REPUBLIC

1 short movie and one not-very-long one, the first about a communist Secret Service scheme in which agents smuggled anti-government activists across a fake border and then tricked them into informing on their friends and co-conspirators.

Marta was the (almost) full-length movie and we enjoyed it. I don't really know what to say about it except it was tense and well-acted.

Movie 14 - Am Ende Kommen Touristen, GERMANY/POLAND

One of the movies we ended up seeing because our first choice wasn't available. It was about a young German living in Oswiecem to do his civil service. It was interesting because it was all about national memory and national shame whether the young have a responsibility to the past, and his ambivalent relationship to other Germans in Poland, who pay lip service to the tragedy of Auschwitz but simultaneously play politics and exploit the polish economy for German gain, and fail to listen or try to understand the living history of the tragedy, preferring to build monuments and to commodify them for tourist consumption. A word that several characters used was 'impact' - the German owner of a Polish chemical plant invited a local Holocaust survivor to talk to the board but cut him off when she felt his speech was "losing impact". The Holocaust survivor, a living witness to the event, felt devalued and said that if people want to find out about the Holocaust, they can watch Schindler's List, as it would have more 'impact'. In this way monuments and entertainment products become more valued than the social history.

Movie 15 - Horror, which is always with you, RUSSIA

Well, we hit paydirt with this one. I wasn't expecting much as the description was a little vague, but I think this is the movie I've been hoping for, as I've chosen a few sort of dark films from the former Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe, and this is the film I hoped Dolina would be. It's sinister-ish but lighthearted, and packed with metaphor and symbolism. It is better than Dolina because as a parable of totalitarianism it succeeds where Dolina fails. Its characters are enjoyable to watch. Sometimes its Kafka-esque, such as when the main character goes to the police and is given the run-around, at other times Bulgakov-esque and cryptic, and other times a bit like David Lynch... (there's an old man who goes around calling inaminate objects "comrade", there are cryptic clues to a mission nobody has properly defined, and then of course there's the symbolism, the kind of symbolism where you could watch the movie for the fifth time and still find something new; empty birdcages, a makeshift church within a warehouse, salt, dolls and bears and rabbits).

Oh gosh it's so exciting. Afterwards K and I discussed our interpretations over dinner. I said I thought the main character (whose name is Marxen, a conflation of Marx and Engels, for which he is constantly teased), symbolised communism in Russia, seduced by the military complex, unable to satisfy his wife (I thought she symbolised 'the people'), unable to find real friends, losing authority in his job as academic intellectual, fearing the church and disbelieving in God while knowing he exists (something that, in K's interpretation of the movie has more weight than it did in mine). Oh yes, this is the kind of movie I could write a thesis on, and if people keep putting out parables of totalitarianism, perhaps I can and will!

How exciting! I am inspired to seek out more Russian films. K points out that Day Watch is Russian and I shouldn't get my hopes up.

Movie 16 - Lucky Miles, AUSTRALIA

Before the movie the Australian director Michael James Rowland introduced the movie by saying the following things:

"I believe that the stories you tell determine your future. This is especially important in the world that I inhabit, where so many decisions are motivated by fear."

"The Australian audience would die to be here with you" (!!!)

"The impressions I have of the Czech Republic come from literature, so I assume you are a country of poets and lovers, and there are no mechanics among you".

A man after my own heart, clearly. Watching this movie in the midst of an audience of Czechs was indeed something a bit special, and I got goosepimples over and over. It made me homesick, although of course my home is nowhere near desert, I still think my national consciousness, our national consciousness, is rooted in that symbolism and mythology.

If this movie surprised me in any way it was how lighthearted it was considering the weightiness of the subject matter - boat people and Australia's refugee policy - by implication. But I think that is what I most liked about it; it did not fail to be political despite its humour - the comedy itself dispelled a stigma, waved away bad blood and fear. I really liked it, and so did the audience. Yay! In fact this movie received the most genuine laughter of all, and the second most enthusiastic applause and also immediate murmerings of happy discussion at the end.

An excerpt from and interview with director Michael James Rowland in Festival Daily, English section.

"Lucky Miles is a work of fiction stitched together from truth. Australia's history is rich with stories of people who come here in reduced circumstances and walked inland expecting there to be hills, lakes, forests and water. The setup of this story is very familiar to Australians; the fresh thing for our home audience is the way we've updated the characters to reflect the political realities of the last 30 years".

Movie 17 - Right, Left, Forward, CZECH REPUBLIC

Was a Czech political documentary about a) the Communist Youth Union and b) the Young Conservative Party in the Czech republic. It was edited in such a way as to poke maximum fun at everyone involves, and was very funny, although it kind of fizzled in the second half, I thought. As far as it went, though, the movie demonstrated and illustrated the reasons for a national distrust of extreme politics on both sides, of ideology in general, to the point where, as someone who thinks that politics is actually pretty important, I felt it was a bit flippant and even possibly exploitative (were these people told they would be torn to shreds?) and occasionally so ridiculous I thought it must be a setup. But I liked it nonetheless.

Movie 18 - Inland Empire, DIR. David Lynch, USA

David Lynch's new movie, Inland Empire, is yet another confusing, surreal, hollywood themed epic. I didn't see Mulholland Drive on the big screen, but I think Inland Empire is possibly the most atmospheric and spooky of all David Lynch movies. The soundtrack is absolutely amazing, and I notice that David Lynch was involved in a lot of it himself.

The movie is 172 minutes long, and that's my main complaint. Watching it is like being trapped in a long night of meaningless, circular, maddening dreams that you're unable to wake up from. An added specialness of this movie was that a lot of the settings and locations look a bit like the Grandhotel lobbies and halls and theatres that abound here in Karlovy Vary. I think to see this movie alone in Divadlo KV theatre would be the creepiest possible experience I can think of. K has a photo of this theatre so you can see what I'm talking about.

Movie 19 - Voyage of the Red Balloon

Somewhat long and slow, but very watchable and natural. The characters may as well be real people. As a portrait of a little family in Paris and a homage to Paris itself and French cinema it is very lovely.

Movie 20 - Nuovomondo / Golden Door

A beautiful but slightly sanitised story of a family of Italians that decide to emigrate to the New World. It's warm and human and has some lovely sequences and images, but although I was uplifted and rated it 'excellent' at the end, it's probably not a movie I would buy on DVD or recommend to everyone I know. Nonetheless I think it will probably do very well for itself.

Movie 21 - Badlands

The American classic with Sissy Spacek and that dude. Beautiful scenes and I loved the part of it that takes place in the forest, but although it's one of my favourite genres (murdering couple on the run road movie), I wasn't that interested. We saw "Boxcar Bertha" on MGM the other week and I enjoyed that a lot more

---

And 'cause we promised pictures of us, here's some goofy snaps.

Us looking like we've had very little sleep

K in the woods! (being monster-iffic)

And a couple final photos of KV, taken on the morning we left.

Now that I've mostly recovered from my cold, I'm writing out my festival diary as it was written. We didn't get to see some of the movies we wanted to see. I wrote a comparison list of our first choice movies and the ones we actually ended up seeing each day, and we missed out on

Noise
Mister Lonely
Rozpominani (Reminiscences, CZ)
Jedne noci v jedno meste (One night in a city, CZ)
A bude hur (it gonna get worse, CZ)
Optimisti
Fido
Zavis, Knize pornofolku... (CZ)
Vratne Lahve (Empties, CZ)
Interview
&
Franz Kafka's Inaka Isys (the Country Doctor)/Funuke Show Some Love You Losers! (Japan)

So in other words I didn't get to see nearly the number of the Czech movies I wanted to see. I think they sold out first. But we did get to see a few movies I wouldn't have chosen first like:

Kid Svensk
Am Ende Kommen touristen
Le Voyage de Balloon Rouge
Nuovomondo
&
Badlands

Some of which were quite good too.

So...

Day One

Bus ride 2.25 hours, although it ended up being almost 3 hours because of a crazy blue car upended in a field. Then when we got to Karlovy Vary, the town seemed so much bigger than I expected, and was already crawling with people, and we (well, I) got in a panic when we discovered that a) the hostel was about 2 km down the river and up a ridiculous unevenly cobbled slope and b) there was no immediately obvious box office or signs indicating same. So, having arrived midafternoon, we had to find our hostel, climb ridiculous slope, ask directions to box office, settle into our room and then find the box office in time to buy the day's tickets. Of course, it didn't happen, but we did acquire our "festival accreditation", 9 day passes which entitled us each to 3 movie tickets per day. They come on orange lanyards and make us look like VIPs except that every other person has one too.

Karlovy Vary itself is very pretty, very opulent, and the atmosphere is festive, not that that's surprising. The festival is much more affordable than the Sydney IFF, even in local terms.

So, no movies on day one, but we did stare at the backs of people's heads in the crowd waiting for actual VIPs to turn up in their Audis on opening night. This got dull pretty immediately, so we went to have dinner. My vegetarian pizza had peas and corn on it, which K sarcastically called a culinary triumph, but since peas and corn (when not mushy) are one of my top ten comfort foods, I was quite pleased. We then decided on the movies we would most like to watch on each of the next 8 days, staggered back up to our hostel, where we consumed several cocktails and beer.

Day Two

Tried to buy tickets for the following day but 2 were already sold out. Both Czech movies, mind you. We had supermarket breakfast, and sampled "spa wafers", some kind of local confection. I'm not sure if they're specifically designed for use in spas/saunas (seems like they would get soggy) but they are basically large thin discs of your standard wafer biscuit, and I seemed to feel more hungry after eating one than I had beforehand.

Between movies we lounge around in the many picturesque and flowered parks, with most everyone else it seems, giggling at ridiculously pruned lapdogs, which seem almost more miniaturised and engineered than the ones in Prague and Sydney.

MOVIE ONE - PENELOPE, DIR. Mark Palansky, USA, 2006

The curse which has fallen upon the wealthy Wilhern family has now come to claim miserable Penelope; when she looks in the mirror she sees a pig's snout staring back at her. However, no-one comes along with an offer of love so that she might be rid of her magic curse. This being a modern fairy tale, Penelope can't be bothered to wait for a husband to come along, so she sets out into the world in order to learn to face her ill fortune.

The festival program rarely seems to mention who's actually starring in the movies (with the odd exception of Steve Buscemi, although maybe I can understand that, since I did enthusiastically circle both movies featuring him, so maybe he's a big draw) so we were surprised to see Christina Ricci, Reese Witherspoon, Richard E. Grant, and the famous-actress-whose-name-I-forget appear onscreen. Penelope is a classic poor-little-rich-girl fairy tale about a girl with a pig's snout for a nose. Actually it's a very delicate pig's nose and fails to make Christina Ricci ugly. The real star of the movie is the little person from "The Station Agent", who plays his gnarled pirate journalist role very amusingly, although some laughs he got were obviously "Oh, the cute dwarf man!" laughs.

It's a visually spectacular movie, all jewel colours and opulent wallpapers. I read in a film review recently about many recent movies offering little more than interior decorating (e.g. Marie Antoinette), and I think it's a criticism that would be appropriate for this movie also, in spite of the heartwarming modern fairy tale theatrics. It seems a little overproduced (and in fact had something like 8 producers). Oh, and the love interest is, for once, deliciously hot. I fail to feel sorry for pig-snouty Miss Ricci. Nice clothes, too!

MOVIE 2 - THE ART OF NEGATIVE THINKING / KUNSTEN A TENKE NEGATIVT, DIR. Bard Breten, Norway 2006

A spirited psychologist accompanies a group of invalids to the house of Ingvild and Geirr, her self-destructive husband who has been wheelchair-bound for two years. Geirr, however, rebels against his wife's attempts to rescue their marriage via positive thinking therapy. A black comedy about dealing with stifling compassion and false sincerity once and for all.

So many dour Scandinavian 'black comedies', but this one is actually very funny and very memorable. It got a standing ovation at the end (I think it was the only one we saw, although I heard that Harold and Maude got one as well), and as K said, it seems unlikely that it would have got such an enthusiastic reception in front of an Australian audience. I laughed out loud maybe four or five times during the movie, but the Czech audience were in stitches from start to finish. It was an occasionally cruel humour, I would go further than black, which is not to judge the viciousness of the laughter, but nonetheless I found it interesting. At times when I was most uncomfortable the rest of the audience seemed to be having the most fun.

While we're on audience comparisons, I saw as many movies as I will be seeing here in the Sydney Film Festival last year, and I remember the audience being 70-80% made up of the kind of 40-60 year old arty set, people who might have been in the Sydney Push in the 60s and wear leather jackets and cropped hair, and beards and tweeds if they're men. The other 20-30% are young professionals doing the festival in the evening after work, and a handful of uni students and industry types. The audience here is 90-95% young and studenty. It's quite a difference.

MOVIE 3 - DAY WATCH (DNEVNOJ DOZOR), Dir. Timur Bekmambetov, RUSSIA, 2006

The age-old battle between light and dark continues. The balance between the so-called Others, who represent the two forces, has been upset by Yegor's having turned to the powers of evil. His father Anton, a devotee of goodness, covers his steps. The situation is complicated by Svetlana the sorceress, for whom both men have affections. A gigantic battle is brewing over Moscow...

We saw this movie because we saw Night Watch a few years ago and basically forgot that although the first half had an interesting aesthetic, it kind of fell into a chaotic mess of not-much sense in the second half. This one was unfortunately like that the whole way through, with the addition of really moronic action sequences, some of which were funny, others just lame, and some of them a bit of both. A bunch of people walked out on it.

Anyway, yeah, lacking anything of the very precise though frenetic style of Night Watch, Day Watch was pretty awful.

Then we had to stagger home and stumble into bed at 2:30AM. Our hostel dorm was full up so we had to just lie down in the dark, not easy when you've just walked a km on a steep slope and then 4 flights of stairs. it was about an hour before I wound down enough to sleep.

DAY 3

We went down early to buy the next day's tickets (you can only buy the tickets from the previous day, and they seem to sell out pretty fast - an hour after the box office opens the most popular movies have sold out) and then had breakfast and got snappy with each other due to less than 5 hrs sleep apiece. Then we had six hours to kill til our first movie so we climbed two of the hills around the town (which is a valley town built along the river), following two tracks called Goethova Cesta and Gogolova Cesta. The first hill, Goethova, has an abandoned tower/restaurant at the top, although it was obviously abandoned at least within the last year or two as the tables were still set and the price of coffee was 30-40 crowns. The floor was covered in insects though, and the electricity wire to the house was almost on the ground. It was quiet and spooky at first, and we took lots of photos, but as we were heading down the hill at about 12.15 a whole bunch of people turned up. We decided they must have come for lunch and would be very disappointed.

After that we walked across to another hill. At a lookout near a monument called the three crosses a Czech guy overheard us speculating on a lavish and somewhat kitsch church that we had wandered past the previous night (I forgot to write that we walked up another hill the previous night while waiting for Day Watch to start at midnight) and explained that it was the Russian church for the Russian part of the spa town which also explained why we had passed an Anglican church in around the same area, the English part of town. Mind you, I don't think the English come to Carlsbad anymore; we haven't come across one even at the film festival, although there are quite a few Americans and other Europeans. Apart from the director of Lucky Miles we didn't see any other Australians either.

Anyway so after 4 hours of hill walking and several new blisters we went back to town to find some lunch before our first movie.

MOVIE 4 - THE TRAP / KLOPKA, DIR. SRDAN GOLUBOVIC, SERBIA, 2007

This Balkan verson of Crime and Punishment, as talented Serbian director Srdan Golubovic characterises his film, gives us a profound insight into the post-Milosevic reality of a county which is no longer at war, but the value of human life remains unaltered. The film also follows on from the now classic "Black wave" series of Yugoslav films.

A serbian film about a man who compromises his morals in order to raise the funds to save his child, after which his life disintegrates. Although it had its moments, I can't get too enthusiastic about this movie, which wasn't helped by the incredibly uncomfortable chairs. My pulse was also racing a bit, I think I was dehydrated from our walk. Anyway, a lot of the movie seemed far too familiar and predictable to me, like, oh here comes the scene where the man washes his face and hands and freaks out because he's killed someone. I may as well have seen the boom in frame, it was so cinematically transparent. And oh, here's the scene where he smashes up his house in frustration because he's lost everything that means anything to him. It was just so obviously a movie, and self-consciously so, and I was bored. Afterwards we bought more water and I was revived enough to watch Movie #5.

MOVIE 5 - THE TRACEY FRAGMENTS, DIR. Bruce McDonald, CANADA, 2006

The juxtaposition of a recurring horse motif and the central song of the film being "Land" from rock singer Patti Smith's album Horses in the new film by Canadian experimenter Bruce McDonald, is no coincidence. Ellen Page gives a flat-out performance as a 15-year-old girl who has lost her little brother and sets out on a desperate journey to find both him and her own conscience and way of thinking. The film had its world premiere at the IFF in Berlin.

A little bit self-indulgent move about a self-obsessed teen. In spite of that I enjoyed it. Ellen Page is a likeable actress (she was in Hard Candy as well). In fact the best thing about the movie was the Q&A session with her and the director, who were both sweet and charming, even if they sort of spoke in hipster platitudes. And because Ellen Page is quite clearly one of the complacently cool alternative girls who I feared and envied in high school, I found it hard to believe her portrayal of bullied underdog. But I am just jealous that I am not tiny and adorable and the toast of the independent movie scene.

MOVIE 6 - KID SVENSK, DIR. Nanna Huolman, SWEDEN/FINLAND, 2006

In the summer of 1984, hard-headed 12-year-old Kirsi goes against her will with her mother to Finland where her family has its roots. A light summer road movie and a serious rite of passage - Kirsi "learns to breathe underwater" in more than the literal sense. She looks for her true home, tries to get closer to her uncommunicative mother, and falls in love for the first time.

My favourite so far, it reminded me a lot of the lovely NZ movie Rain, although somewhat less dark, in the way it delicatively and lovingly portrayed the playful sexuality and tragedy and drama of the lives of pre-teen girls, and the way your relationship with your parents becomes more difficult and fraught in your early teens, without being depressing or heavy about it. In fact it is a joyous, celebratory and loving movie. The director spoke (very nervously) before the movie and said that it was a tribute to the summers of her childhood and a "declaration of war - oh, I mean love, Freudian slip - to my mother". All in the warm Kodak colours of the early 1980s. Beautiful. Beautiful. Unlike the other movies I saw today I wasn't secretly waiting for it to end, and was disappointed when it did.

Time to update this most uninspired (lately) of travel blogs. A couple of things to catch up and maybe get back into the swing of updating. I miss a blog format that results in comments and responses, this format is, as I suspected, most unrewarding. Poo to travellerspoint for no anonymous comments. Srsly.

1. Spent the evening before last watching Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and which made me homesick with missing the comfortable contradictions of home. In the morning we had decided to splash out and go shopping for inspiring clothing, since I made the mistake of only really bringing my most practical and neutral clothing, and without colourful clothing I wilt and my self esteem suffers, so boo to that. Still, there are slim pickings in Prague for a girl of my nonstandard clothing size. But we found a couple of things.

2. Random things are always happening. We went out one day last week to discover that sculptures had been mantled all over our nearby square, Namesti Republiky, overnight. Including a pig on a diving board (which incidentally got stolen/damaged a couple of days later, but has now returned to his post). Last weekend we went to the United Islands of Prague Music Festival, which was also much fun, with different stages on different islands to walk between and discover, and we saw a bunch of random euro-bands.

3. Dismayed to hear on English-language Al Jazeera the results of the policy of new paternalism the Australian government has recently adopted to deal with problems in some Aboriginal communities. Reports find that poverty and unemployment are the root causes of the problem, so John Howard will ban alcohol and pornography rather than addressing these, taking away dignity and self-determination rather than restoring it... However a quick scan of SMH.com.au yields zero info. What's going on, homesters?

4. On Friday (tomorrow) we take a bus to Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad spa resort) to do the KV International Film Festival for 9 days. I am very very excited about this.

5. There have been storms every few days, with all the attendant spectacular clouds. The other day we went down to the river to watch the storm come in, and all the people with dachschunds and kids on bikes go by. The storm rolled over, but forty minutes later another one came, and we ran home in drenching rain. Perfect.

6. Have discovered the best place for a) Indian food and b) Vegetarian food is the Hare Krishna Govindas just around the corner. It is wonderful. A couple of times here I have actually ordered meat meals in order to avoid feeling like I have consumed instant heart attack. A couple of times I have walked home from my lunch of fried dumplings and four kinds of cheese with the most alarming chest pains. Goulash and cabbage seems positively refreshing after that. I still love you, Czech food, but oh I often think I will be glad to return to a land of light meals, especially on the hotter days.

7. Culture shock has been pretty negligible, actually. But occasionally things will happen that make us remember what a strange place we are actually in. One weekday morning we were sitting at home minding our business when there was a loudspeaker announcement saying that the Town of Prague was checking the city alarm system and an alarm would sound at noon. On hot days a truck rolls around the streets spraying cold water on all the passers by. One evening I was sitting in the little park by the church and someone's pet rabbit appeared under my seat, twitching its little nose at me. It ran around the park for an hour or so while I wrote in my notebook, and then its owners chased it around and cornered it and put it back in its basket and off it went home. I can't think of anything else right now but it's little odd things like that. Cars not stopping at pedestrian crossings unless you play chicken with them.

Well, we've been in Prague for two weeks now, and are settling in nicely. My Mum went home on Tuesday of the first week, we saw her off at the tram stop near our apartment at 4am. She flew to Paris for another day before flying home. She was emailing my other address (the one I haven't checked since leaving home) so I had no idea if she made it home safely, and it seemed like every time I called she was out for one reason or another.

Our apartment is in a lovely part of the New Town, pretty close to the Jewish Quarter, and with a mediaeval church just across the road. It's a beautiful church with a little courtyard with lots of benches for old ladies to sit on with their lapdogs.

I feel as though I am making no progress with the language, in spite of my attempts to speak Czech each day. It is hard to learn a language when the signs and menus are pretty much all in English as well as Czech. But we are becoming more and more familiar with the streets, and explore a new area every few days. We are still walking a lot.

The second week we did less than the first week, because K is sick. Mind you he's been sick on and off (mostly on) for most of the time we've been in Europe, but he is more sick now, and I am nagging him to see a doctor probably more than a good girlfriend should.

I did spend a day (on the 5th of June) walking around the perimeter of Hradcany (the castle area) looking for anything approximating a protest about George Bush's visit on the way to the G8 summit to persuade the Czech Republic to let him build a radar tracking station for his current pet anti-missile system. No such luck. I think I walked for three hours and then to Wenceslas Square and all I found were soldiers/police with guns and muzzled dogs, journalists carrying audio-visual equipment to and from vans and confused Japanese tourists who seemed to be the only people who didn't realise the castle was blocked off that day. I was very disappointed and am not sure a) why Australians have such an exaggerated reputation for political apathy and b) why Czechs have such an exaggerated reputation for political engagement (or did have). But perhaps I am mistaken there. I thought I saw a group of anarchists with molotov cocktails at one point but they were just some drunken lads taking bottles of beer up to the castle parks.

And yesterday (after trying to find a doctor for K) we went to the Prague Biennale in a leafy and pretty area called Karlin and beforehand drank wine in the park, so we looked at the art while slightly tipsy and dehydrated. It was an extremely hot day, probably not by Sydney standards but we are surprised at how exactly like Sydney summers the Prague summer has been so far, with the cycles of humidly hot days and electric storms with rain. We had an ambitious plan to climb Petrin Hill before drinking our wine but our cheese was melting so we just picked some random park.

Speaking of random parks we went up to the famous Letna Park the other day. Instructive lesson for heads of state and town planners: if you're going to install symbolic monuments make sure they don't have moving parts as it might backfire on you. Last time I in Prague there was a working metronome above the city, symbolising the patience and hope for the future of the Czech people (or so I was told). Anyway it hasn't moved at all since we got here and as far as I know it hasn't moved for several years. I guess it just broke down. But Letna was a lively place with beautiful views.

I really like it here. It is the only city we visited on our travels that I could imagine staying for a really long time (and that most definitely includes Paris), because there's always stuff going on and a hundred billion cafes and pubs with food to try, and it remains very affordable as long as you avoid the tourist traps. Sometimes you get surprised by what you get. Once I ordered something called a "Magic Garden" and got steamed broccoli and carrots under a layer of garlic cream and cheese. It was delicious, but the kind of meal you make at home when really incredibly depressed and hide from your family members, not something you'd expect to get at a restaurant. Another time I misguidedly ordered a "Sweet Omelette" and basically got an omelette with raspberry jam inside and wet tinned fruit on top. A lot of these things are a consequence of ordering from the "meatless dishes" section of the menu, which seems to be random side dishes and may include deserts. Hm.

A lot of other nice things have happened. We've seen another Czech movie (I Served the King Of England) and met our awesome new friend Vicky, who is a Chicago girl living here and teaching English and has a wonderfully dry sense of humour and was kind enough to take us around the city and show us a lot of great things, including the restaurant/cafe that gave me "The Magic Garden" and an art shop where I bought an aquarell sketchpad for my aquarell pencils.

If anyone would like to send us letters or lavish gifts our address is:

#10, Petrska 9
Nove Mesto, Praha 1
Czech Republic

Until the 15th of August or so.

Til next time,
Frances.