2024-03-17 05:39:07
Probably no visitor to the new Czech comedy Sladký život expects to see Marcello Mastroianni sweeping parties and frolicking in the Trevi Fountain in Rome. The title, copying Federico Fellini’s famous film from 1960, proves only one thing: the prevailing characteristic of the mainstream domestic cinema is laziness.
In the first scene of Sweet Life, which has been shown in cinemas since Thursday, hockey player Rosťa Beran, nicknamed Doctor or Aries, runs into the goalpost and makes faces at female fans through the Plexiglas. In terms of trying to depict the actions of a famous athlete, this is probably the most realistic moment of the film. After the thirty-nine-year-old hero, played by Vladimír Polívka, wins the title of world champion and proudly walks among the journalists with a giant gold medal, his career, personal life and the credibility of the film take a steep downward curve.
Director Tomáš Hoffman based his work on popular and sometimes certainly true stereotypes about macho guys with stellar sports careers who act like jerks, squander their high earnings in the casino and basically only sleep with women under thirty.
During one of these numerous “one-offs”, the Doctor loses his health. He suddenly needs the help of a real doctor – and not only that, he needs to get a new heart right away. But it is not a doctor, but a female doctor who appears in the hall. Unfortunately, one of those whose hearts he once broke.
Despite his mistrust of women’s surgical skills, the operation goes well. However, Rosťa suspects that he received an organ that belonged to a woman. And his boyishness soon begins to disappear as well.
It could be the plot of a dozen romantic comedies, of which there have been many. And actually it is. It’s just amazing how little effort the creators put into filling the predictable pattern with at least minimal effort for some basic believability, drama or any other common good.
Rosťa, played by Vladimír Polívka, behaves like a seven-year-old child in an adult body. | Photo: CinemArt
No, we don’t really expect a realistic probe into a man’s search for his fragile, better self. But Sweet Life squeaks practically from the beginning and in almost everything.
When Rosťa discovers that, in addition to his career, he also lost all his finances a long time ago, he has to temporarily take up residence in a basement room with shabby walls, the only advantage of which is that it has a view from the window of just enough women under their skirts. But the hero didn’t live in a luxurious villa before, but in a small room on the floor of two older people, probably his parents, who “amusingly” glossed over his loud intercourse at the beginning of the film. However, these characters soon disappear from the story, as does their house.
As soon as Hynek Čermák comes as a tough mobster or businessman to recover the money he lent the Doctor for roulette, it is resolved by the hero handing over the “apartment” he just acquired – that uninhabitable hole has probably mysteriously gained in value. With a similar logic, other problems and their solutions appear in the first part of the work, probably in order for the authors to kill time somehow.
But in the meantime, an imaginary female heart begins to work in the chest of the hairy, uncouth protagonist, who accidentally finds an article about a donor in a women’s magazine, becomes fixated on the idea that he has her vital organ in his body, and sets off to search for her family.
When he discovers that it was the mother of a strange nature-based jam-making family who rammed into his car the other day in a very unpleasant scene, trying to show gratitude gets complicated.
A woman’s heart may be beating in the chest of the uncouth Rosti played by Vladimír Polívka. | Photo: CinemArt
As can be expected, a thin widower suffering from narcolepsy and especially his daughter finally accept the hockey player who has his mother’s heart – under very bizarre circumstances. And not only them.
Strange things also begin to happen between Roső, his attending physician played by Petra Hřebíčková – one of those whom he once did not call after a nice afternoon – and her adult daughter.
In the second half of Sweet Life, there is room for moving scenes based on the fact that the ruffian Rosťa discovers how to treat people. He discovers that it is possible to communicate with women over thirty or with a sickly-looking accountant who sometimes falls asleep due to agitation. Jan Cina embodies his fragile constitution with every movement. He looks and acts like an unusually thin and tall hobbit.
Unfortunately, these sweet moments based on solid acting are randomly scattered in a completely pointless plot arc. In other words, the arc – probably the screenwriters Tomáš Hoffman and Martin Horský didn’t even try. They just randomly move the hero between locations until it works out.
The world of this film consists practically only of people with whom the protagonist has ever slept. And above all, Rosťa consistently behaves like a roughly seven-year-old child in an adult body, who only gradually replaces the need to have sex non-stop for the desire to learn how to knit or cook marmalade.
As for the ability to make independent decisions, however, it remains at the level of a freshman. Therefore, he sometimes accidentally finds himself at home for dinner with a family that immediately starts planning a wedding, because the sports great once slept with their daughter and now he met her outside with a dog.
Things start to happen between Rostov, played by Vladimír Polívka, and his doctor, played by Petra Hřebíčková. | Photo: CinemArt
Romantic comedies usually unfold in a kind of sinusoid: the heroes get to know each other, fall out, get back together again. And the pleasure of the better ones often stems from small deviations from the proven pattern, or from a subversive effort to somehow turn the working formula on its head. But the creators of Sweet Life didn’t even bother to copy that formula.
There is actually only one character that somehow develops, and that is Rosťa. He doesn’t have any characteristics or character, but what can you expect from a “freshman”. So the whole movie is about the hero becoming a better person and the others kind of waiting for him to be a usable part of the adult world enough to take him in.
There are no real complications here, even the mobsters here are understanding and warm people. And for some reason, the whole thing is marketed as a romantic movie for adults.
That the first signs of romance don’t appear until much later? Does not matter. If it’s enough that people like to eat marmalade here, try to sweeten your life at your own risk. Or rather, watch one of the movies about Paddington. There is plenty of marmalade. And it is significantly more sophisticated, more mature, funnier and more moving.
Film
Sweet life
Directed by Tomáš Hoffman
CinemArt, in theaters from March 14.