Conference bookie::movies

1226.0. "Kolya" by CTHU26::S_BURRIDGE () Mon Mar 10 1997 10:10

    
    Nominated for this year's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

    Prague, 1988.  Frantisek Louka, a 1st-class orchestral cellist, is down on 
    his luck, having lost his position in a high profile orchestra because of 
    an imprudent remark on some bureaucratic paperwork.  He is making ends meet
    playing at cremations and restoring inscriptions on gravestones.  He's a
    confirmed bachelor, who lives alone in a tower apartment in an old building
    in Prague and has occasional affairs with a variety of women.

    Louka agrees, for a large sum of money, to undergo a "fake marriage" to a
    Russian woman, so that she can get Czech papers.  The plan is to divorce 
    in 6 months.  But she emigrates, illegally, to West Germany, and then her 
    mother has a sudden stroke, leaving Louka with a 5-year-old Russian 
    stepson he barely knows.

    Most of the movie shows Louka coming to terms with his situation, learning 
    to be a father to little Kolya.  Kolya's a cute kid, not in a smartass 
    Hollywood way, a big-eyed, very lonely, little blond Russian.  Man and 
    child come to love each other.  And, although Louka is a pretty apolitical 
    character, the politics of Czech-Russian relations at the end of the cold 
    war are ever-present, ironically interwoven with the personal, human story.
    (The heart of the movie, however, is the human story.) 

    It's all very well done, an understated, sometimes humourous tear-jerker 
    with interesting characters and setting.

    -Stephen