“I’m a lover, not a fighter / And I’m really built for speed,” sang Kinks frontman Ray Davies in at least one of the songs that shares a title with Slovakian writer-director Martina Buchelová‘s hugely appealing first feature. The first half of that lyric is true of Andrej (Adam Kubala), the shambling 20-year-old protagonist of this generation-specific romantic comedy; the second, not so much, as he spends much of this deliberately meandering, discursive film trying to restart a life that has stalled in spite of all his worst efforts. Structured as a patchwork of loosely connected, inconsistently chronological episodes, “Lover, Not a Fighter” feels rhythmically shaggy in a way that reflects the insecurities, anxieties and liberties of GenZ living, without patronizing its drifting characters.
A Slovakian-Czech co-production that premiered to gales of laughter from local audiences at Karlovy Vary, Buchelová’s debut stands as an unusually crowdpleasing winner of the festival’s Proxima competition — a showcase intended as an adventurous, discovery-oriented counterpart to the fest’s main Crystal Globe awards, and often given over to more experimental works. With its freewheeling construction and distinctive, deadpan comic tone, “Lover, Not a Fighter” is plenty unconventional, but still broadly accessible — perhaps not every iota of its peculiar Eastern European humor translates, but more than enough does to make for a potential word-of-mouth charmer on the festival circuit going forward.
