| Postel
Oskar Reif Czech Republic/Germany
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| A debut feature by a veteran documentary and television filmmaker,
Oskar Reif's Postel (The Bed), subtitled a 'Czech pornotragedy' and developed
from the writer-director's prize-winning screenplay, fits neatly into the
Czech tradition of the absurd, grotesque, black tragicomedy. The film begins
with Lubos Urna's life on earth over.
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| Now, for the first time, the teacher and family man has
the chance to reflect on the dominating influence women have had on his
life from the safe confines of an urn containing his ashes.
The bed? "It's the place that connects him from his locale in the nether world with happenings in the real world, both symbolically and factually." Reif also highlights the bed as an important setting where events in the story take place: "Lubos was conceived in a bed, born there, and dies there. During his life he often hides in bed, rests there, dreams there, and lives there – the same as everybody else." The only difference is that in Lubos's world, women rule everywhere: mothers and women-teachers, real women and fantasy women, women of his boyish imagination that turn into erotically bizarre dreams. Since men were always little more than shadows in this aggressive world of women, the anti-hero's fantasy and imagination compensated. Postel introduces a filmmaker with a fine sense for timing, craftsmanship, and humorous twists (down to a surprise ending). Given "there's a great difference between the way women and men see things," Reif's absurd narrative gets in a few licks at politically correct feminist icons currently pervading westernised Czech society. All the principles in this absurd fantasy come from the stage: Michal Przebinda as Lubos, the director's alter ego; Stanislava Jachnicka as Olga, his harridan wife; and Sylva Langova-Williams as the quaint grandmother, who returned to her native Prague after 40 years on British stage and screen. Shooting in black-and-white, cameraman Igor Luther (The Tin Drum) lends appropriate polish to Lubos's dreamworld. Ron Holloway |
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