Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
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Petr Meissel | ... | Mr. Pivoine |
Gabriela Wilhelmová | ... | Mrs. Loubalova | |
Barbora Hrzánová | ... | Postmistress | |
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Anna Wetlinská | ... | Mrs. Beltinska |
Jirí Lábus | ... | Newspaper Vendor | |
Pavel Nový | ... | Mr. Beltinski | |
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Frantisek Polata | ||
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Eva Vidimská | ||
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Ervín Tomendál | ||
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Josef Chodora | ||
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Marie Zemanová | ||
Zhan Daniel | |||
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Martin Kublák | ||
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Eva Vosahlíková | ||
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Martin Radimecký |
Six outwardly average individuals have elaborate fetishes they indulge with surreptitious care. A mousy letter carrier makes dough balls she grotesquely ingests before bed. A shop clerk fixates on a TV news reader while he builds a machine to massage and masturbate him. One of his customers makes an elaborate chicken costume for a voodoo-like scene with a doll resembling his plump neighbor. She, in turn, has a doll that resembles him, which she whips and dominates in an abandoned church. The TV news reader has her own fantasy involving carp. Her husband, who is indifferent to her, steals materials to fashion elaborate artifacts that he rubs, scrapes and rolls across his body. Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
One-word summary: Masterpiece. This one keeps me mesmerized every frame for the whole 80 minutes. Surrealistic, fantastic, bizarre, fetishistic, fascinating, it is Jan Svankmajer's finest excursion into animania. Why this work, and this artist, toil in relative obscurity is beyond me. (Makes me wonder what *else* out there is this good but this hard to discover.) It is a guilty pleasure, indeed, to watch this, but as a work of cinema, it is wonderful. (The subject matter is quite incidental, really; my mind could easily be massaged for 80 minutes like this with just about anything Svank could concoct.) I daresay it's in or near my top 10 favorites, but it isn't supposed to be...