Geraubtes Leben

The door to the world has opened, the filmmakers stopped being afraid and Filip Renč made a movie already in the time between the two republics (the Czechoslovak and the Czech), which is simply unforgettable. I admit that I had a bit of a problem with the filmmaking. Mainly because it takes place in the dark most of the time. But that’s all overshadowed by the story itself, which is quite brutal. And Anna Geislerová demonstrates that her title of the most prominent Czech actress is completely deserved. (13.03.2014)

Effectively directed, however, actually superficial film that is far away from real events and characters it's based on. Renč is a film professional who is excellent at shooting commercials and music videos, but in a fictional film, he always tends towards kitsch to some extent. In this movie, it's not so much about real drama, but rather about carefully calculated manipulation of the audience's emotions. By the way, this piece belongs to the better ones, maybe even the best, that he has ever accomplished in a fictional film. If this film works, it's also thanks to Geislerová's presence and the overall smart casting. Overall impression: 60%. (23.06.2006)

I don't like Czech director Filip Renč, or any director without a manuscript. With this film you can understand his youth and post-revolutionary derangement, but it was very hard to get past certain stages of the film. Renč's eternal desire to make something that avoids Czech standards is so evident here, more than in any of his other films, that it reaches a severe spasm at certain stages comparable to the post-revolutionary wave of Vit Olmer (did you get goosebumps just now, too?). To top it all off, he put himself in the male lead role and it really hurts. His total lack of acting talent would be obvious even on a fourteenth videotape copy of a dumbshow grotesque. His playing at being an appealing action hero with his heart in the right place comes across as a preschooler playing detective, and his performance in the final scene oscillates with awkwardness in the fatal consequence of that expression. Slow-motion shots, strange resurrections and, by the finale, the cast of the 1st floor (who on earth was that dude with the horribly whitewashed face in the straitjacket and dice?) make the film a truly contradictory show that gets stuck realizing what the film's possible ambitions were. Because from the very first scene, when a public safety car drives in the gloom along a deserted county road somewhere on the edge of the world, it has the makings of a hellishly depressing atmospheric ride. And the film manages to maintain that bleakness most of the time, before briefly killing it again with some stupidity. Add to that a certain cold rawness to the film, some great production design, and a 14-year-old (perfectly naked in places) Anna Geislerová, and it doesn't come out all that terrible, but it had the makings of 4 stars. Imagining what Michálek or Zelenka would have done with it... ah well. (17.04.2008)