Directed by:
Jan HřebejkScreenplay:
Petr JarchovskýCinematography:
Bartek CierlicaComposer:
Petr OstrouchovCast:
Aňa Geislerová, Ondřej Sokol, Martin Finger, Klára Melíšková, Gabriela Míčová, Josefína Marková, Samuel Budiman, Lenka Krobotová, David Novotný (more)Plots(1)
The ZAHRADNICTVÍ (GARDEN STORE) trilogy consists of three separate films, all taking place in Czechoslovakia, set against the backdrop of some of the most dramatic periods of the past century (1939-1959), starting with WWII, covering the period of post-war optimism, and ending with the rise of the Communist dictatorship. It tells the story of three related families: the family of an air radio operator, the family of the owner of a hair salon, and the family of a garden store owner. The trilogy encompasses twenty years of the lives of its characters, who had to live out the best years of their lives in these complicated times.
RODINNÝ PŘÍTEL (FAMILY FRIEND) is a melodrama set in the 1940s during the German occupation. Three young sisters, two of them with children, are awaiting the return of their imprisoned husbands and the fathers of their families. Jiří, a family friend and a physician, selflessly helps this small family group, constrained as it is by the war. The film is a story of love that cannot be fulfilled; it tells of faithfulness, desire, guilt and love; it is about departures and homecomings, and about family, parents and children. This is a family portrait seen from the perspective of women brought together by fate. (Cinemart)
(more)Videos (5)
Reviews (7)
Because of the promotion of Garden Store: A Family Friend, and in fact from the entire trilogy, we tend to have too high of expectations that simply cannot be fulfilled. Ondřej Sokol has a great role in the film, which deserved more than a few words at the end. When you think about it, he's actually the only one who stands out. The film lacks humor, and although the drama is good, it's too drawn out even in the first film.
()
Rather than a classic film trilogy, it looks more like it’s going to be a film series with Garden Store. Otherwise, I can't explain why Hřebejk and Jarchovský would present so many characters in this film. Not only do they not affect anything the plot, but they instead disappear from it and it does not matter at all. I hope we get to see them next time. Otherwise, I liked A Family Friend, and particularly Martin Finger confirmed how great an actor he is. Aňa Geislerová and Ondrej Sokol worked great together and I have nothing against the long Christmas scene, because it felt pretty authentic and had the atmosphere that it was supposed to have.
()
A pierced melodrama with an amputated head. For ten minutes I laughed at the idea of Ondřej Sokol and character acting, and during the rest of the unjust runtime I meditated on how in 2017 the once sensible creative duo was able to make something so weak. So: in the first 10 minutes, about five times as many things happen compared to the rest of the movie. For an hour and a half, we watch the bloodless variation of Chekhov, from which the protectorate banality feels like torturous boredom, which is only diversified by Uncle Jiří's unintentionally pedophile etudes and moments when Sokol and Geislerová tell the men and girls that they feel something for each other, and that it’s probably not because Jiří is a faithful family friend. The lack of plot of some of the family sessions is also repeated by voiceover. The virginal nature of one house with three sisters is disrupted by the invasion of Sabina Remundová, which was originally probably intended for the unrealized film The Sun, Hay, and the Protectorate. When it seems that we will only be watching ketamine family sediments with terribly plank speeches for 130 minutes, a big drama strikes, because someone will return who the characters are not waiting for, but the viewer is waiting for him, because he probably knows it's “Kodet from Cosy Dens, but younger". However, Jarchovský successfully prevents the impending drama by letting one of the characters die of typhus, which the other character tells us through a beautiful voiceover, in which the verbs end in a pleasant archaic. This distorted structure with many spots with zero plot leads to the speculation that Hřebejk is trying to direct art magic of ordinariness, like we know from Hirokazu Koreeda’s films. His directing is nevertheless totally cerebral and no, I don't consider the naive motifs and the occasionally shaky filming to be a directing concept. When it seems that the war, which subjectively lasts 30 years, is finally over and the film with it, a wandering scene reminds us that there are still dilemmas that the rest of the trilogy must resolve. Family chronicles are meant to remind us of the burden of passing time. Gardening reminds us that there is nothing worse than when, instead of film time, the viewer feels the existential weight of his ass in a cinema seat. For me, this is the new bottom for the creative duo, who once managed to film a similar genre with ease and humor. [yes, of course it's fine in terms of craftsmanship and in the first tolerable 15 minutes I give them the originally denied one star. I am, like Ondra Sokol, a "good person"]
()
A very weak and shallow film, suffering both for being the first of three (it’s rather more of an introductory film that only presents the characters and prepares the setting for the rest of the story), and for a number of film shortcomings at almost all levels, sometimes outright beginner mistakes, which is really shocking for Hřebejk. The story is terribly undramatic and lack conflict, and therefore feels very lazy, while any hint of at least a bit of interesting plot is always swept from the table right from the start. There is maybe about an hour of plot in the film and the rest is filler made up of purely "empty" and non-story passages, which slow down the film even more and unnecessarily stretch it beyond the limit of its carrying capacity. The chosen mood of the film, combining two completely incompatible genres - chaste melodrama and a beaming comedy in the style of Cosy Dens, trying in vain for similarly penetrating funny one-liners, really doesn’t work. You may laugh a few times, but nothing will affect you emotionally in the film in any way. The last hopes die at the end, when the film deals with the death of one of the main characters in a shameful way with a single sentence, moreover in voiceover and out of the picture, which truly is serious amateurism. The actors are great and the period styling is in fact excellent, but these are not enough to carry the film. The connection to Cosy Dens is minimal and rather disruptive, but we will what happens in the next episodes.
()
I remember when I saw a poster for the film somewhere and burst out laughing. So I'm not in marketing, but I'd love to watch from a distance to see how many moviegoers will be lured to the theater the by something called Garden Store: A Family Friend. A more settled and unexciting title next time please, said your great-grandma. Apart from that, A Family Friend is probably the strongest testament yet to the preserved and isolated creativity of Hřebejk and Jarchovský, where the dramaturg truly failed miserably. The result is a narrative avant-garde where time is distributed between plots, subplots, and illustrative moments in a completely bizarre way. So for the viewer, the film actually becomes a bit of an interactive adventure, where they try to guess from the film what it's about and what it’s actually trying to be. I would have thought I could better handle Sokol in a "serious" role since I've never actually heard him say anything funny so I don't consider him a comedian, except that his acting register occupies only a strangely infantile position in the range between a young Daniel Craig and an old Marilyn Manson. Then, at the end, I was fascinated by two shots, first when we see a panorama of a street in Terezin, which he cuts away from right after the camera crane starts to lift, and then the last one, where a character is obscured by a ceiling lamp, yet he still cuts after the actress reaches her mark, except that you haven’t been able to see her for five seconds. It clearly indicates that no one on the creative team watched it all the way to the end. I look forward with loathsome spite to the next installment, whose poster this time around suggests another solid slice of the wave of "new Czech weird cinema".
()
Ads