Momentous events such as the sale of the family home, a young man coming out to his family, or the staging of a drag performance in a small town would seem like perfect ingredients for an intensely dramatic, conflict-ridden film. But in his fourth feature “Chica Checa” — premiering in the Crystal Globe competition at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival — young Czech director Šimon Holý seems determined instead to lower the temperature as much as possible, crafting a pleasant comedy-drama where there is never any doubt that all will be fine in the end.
Despite the film’s festival profile, then, it is better approached not as an arthouse proposition, but as a commercial, middlebrow crowdpleaser aimed at local audiences, albeit with slighty edgier subject matter than most titles of its ilk. But even from this particular perspective, Holý’s film remains an unconvincing work, too clumsy both formally and thematically to leave much of an impression.
Zdena (Pavla Tomicová) is a middle-aged woman living alone in a rather large house in a Czech village, spending most of her time at her ailing mother’s bedside in the hospital. In one of many small but nagging inconsistencies, characters repeatedly refer to her isolation and reluctance to socialize since the death of her husband some years ago — despite the film opening on Zdena at a dance, and her later attending a house party.
