Kolya

Running time: N/A

On the eve of the Velvet Revolution a mercenary, has-been musician unexpectedly finds he must finally grow up in Kolya, directed by Jan Sverak, the foremost member of Czech cinema's new wave. It's 1989 and Prague, occupied by the Russians, is on the brink of enormous political changes. For Frantisek Louka, however, concerns are a shade more mundane. Once a renowned cellist in the August Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Frantisek has been reduced to playing for funerals at the city crematorium and renovating tombstones in his spare time. His dream is to one day earn enough money to buy a little Trabant automobile so he doesn't have to lug his cumbersome instrument around on foot. Frantisek has enough trouble paying the rent for his one-room apartment to afford a car, so his dream seems unattainable - until a friendly gravedigger offers to pay Frantisek to marry his Russian niece, who needs Czech papers. A hardened bachelor, Frantisek declines at first, but the gravedigger and his own need for cash wear him down. When he finds out the bride-to-be is in fact young and beautiful, he caves in. Everything works out well at first - the gravedigger's niece gets her papers, Frantisek gets his Trabant - but the clever plot doesn't last long. Suddenly, Frantisek's new wife emigrates to Germany to join her lover. The authorities find this odd, but Frantisek has bigger worries; his vanished bride has left behind her five-year-old son, Kolya, for whom he must now take responsobility. Working from a script bu his father Zdenek, Sverak weds the fond familial drama of his debut, Elementary School, with the offbeat humour of his most recent film, The Ride. The result is a warm and funny portrait of a man who, as the Iron Curtain crumbles around him, experiences a revolution of his own. --Dimitri Eipides (TIFF)