Hodina tance a lásky

This film is too perfect to be just a TV movie. Although I tend to overlook other works by Pavel Kohout, here I believe in Jelena Mašínová and Viktor Polesný. The perfection in layering multiple layers of stories and motifs unfolding during a single day on June 6, 1944, repeatedly captivates, exhilarates, but also appeals to general lessons from a crisis (war) situation, becoming a better fresco on the theme of the decay of the decadence of a better society of the Third Reich than Luchino Visconti's The Damned. Zdena Studenková is magnificent and ethereal as Monika, a former artist who interprets all the dizziness of a domain inevitably approaching its end through her rendition of Goethe. All the female characters are excellent, whether it's the mother and daughter played by Zlata Adamovská and Ester Geislerová or their elite male counterparts led by Boris Rösner and Roman Zach. I can only applaud so that it reaches the ears of the Hungarian Royal Ballet. (18.02.2009)