Directed by:
Börkur GunnarssonScreenplay:
Börkur GunnarssonCinematography:
Tony GrešekCast:
Markéta Coufalová, Kaisa Elramly, Jiří Ployhar ml., Martin Hofmann, Eva Leimbergerová, Hana Maciuchová, Jiří Lábus, Ladislav Hampl, Stefanía Thors (more)Plots(1)
A comedy as bitter as strong coffee about people who don't know what they want because they want too much. When they finally get it they realize how little they actually need. But the film is also about love, about a round-trip journey from passion to hysteria, about contempt for infidelity (except that which we allow ourselves), and about minor details like our careers or telling someone we love them. Friends since childhood, Maya and Renata haven't seen each other in ten years. When they meet again by chance they decide to take a trip back to the place they grew up. They invite their boyfriends to come along but David and Tomislav don't like the idea at all... (official distributor synopsis)
(more)Reviews (1)
I've got a bit of a personal dilemma. After twenty minutes of watching an anonymous cluster of characters that I couldn't unravel even after several attempts, I wanted to leave the cinema and not bother with a film where an Egyptian and a Croat are in a relationship, and the viewer has no idea how these two got together, and why on earth they stay together when they can't stand each other for longer than half an hour. The actors don't really help the director either, and most of the scenes almost seem like the wrong tape footage got into the final edit instead of the correct one. When one of the characters gets stuck in the middle of a sentence and then stutters on, the viewer must be intended to grasp that this means the characters are supposed to be natural. And no, it doesn't work, Börkur Gunnarsson is really not Alice Nellis. So, in my eyes, the savior of the film ended up being Davídek. The fact that he is ugly, annoying, and despotic speaks for something. His lines during his fits of rage save the unbearable static story at times and help to endure the illogically behaving collection of oddballs around him. But when I think about Bitter Coffee at this moment, I remember the pretty relaxed atmosphere and the decent soundtrack and, to my surprise, I judge that if I happened to come across the film on TV, I probably wouldn't be able to resist watching it over. Still, it's not getting a better rating, because at the same time I remember the scene of "improvisation on boats", where the beautiful Markéta Coufalová delivers the unforgettable line "Go or we'll...bug you". It could have been an amazing film, this is how I want to see only another film with Davídek's character and a better-made film with Coufalová, where she doesn't have to talk too much. P.S.: With the passage of several years, I gladly acknowledge that although the form is really poor, the content remains in my mind. Some of the dialogue is taken from real life and brutally unedited, so I'm raising it to three stars with a clear conscience.
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