Directed by:
Jan HřebejkScreenplay:
Petr JarchovskýCinematography:
Martin ŠáchaComposer:
Vladivojna La ChiaCast:
Aňa Geislerová, Ondřej Vetchý, Hynek Čermák, Zita Morávková, Anna Kameníková, Luděk Munzar, Miroslav Hanuš, Alena Mihulová, Daniel Czeizel, Rebeka Lizlerová (more)Plots(1)
You'll never get rid of love. It can get very quick to fall from the top to the very bottom. Sometimes, one little sentence is enough to wreck everything you'd been building. A renowned doctor and loved father and husband faces an indictment of a felony. He quickly finds himself in custody which is a place very hard for anyone to prove innocent, mainly when the opponent is being helped by a person likely motivated by a personal revenge. Well, the truth is said to beat lies and hatred. Nevertheless, that doesn't necessarily mean victory. Sometimes it's just a break before another, a whole lot more challenging fight. Especially when in the endeavor to save yourself, you sacrifice secrets that were to be kept hidden forever, because they are too dangerous for you and your loved ones. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (9)
It goes something like this: It looks good, but it's not good. Hřebejk certainly knows how to make films, he knows how to choose his actors and music, he uses imaginative camera angles and even an ordinary conversation looks interesting thanks to these aspects... But the screenplay that Jarchovský wrote this time is terrible. I've actually seen two (or three) films connected by an awkward transition, which was probably supposed to take my breath away and make me say "Well, that's really something", but that didn't happen. I honestly suffered through the last third of Innocence. It’s a pity about Ondřej Vetchý, who had practically nothing to do and was still just Ondřej Vetchý, it’s a pity about Luděk Munzár, who was completely useless, and it’s a pity about Anna Geislerová, who also just repeated several characters from her acting past. The two and a half stars I give are purely for Hřebejk's work, and I round up perhaps only for Zita Morávková. But I truly hesitate to do so.
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The idea of family dialogue and sweet-natured atmosphere is close to my heart. So close that I would never have attributed Innocence to the creative duo of Jan Hřebejk and Petr Jarchovský. The latter's script transforms an innocent melodrama into a complex relationship-tragic fresco, where every line of dialogue has its firm place and no character appears in it just because. The trailer’s lure of a Czech Lolita suddenly seems very misleading. Moreover, the way the story reveals its true nature is unprecedented in a Czech film setting. Hřebejk himself does not drag down the script with any usual softening, his perspective is exceptionally accurate this time in suffocating shots that emphasize an unusually personal approach to the characters. When combined with excellent performances (led by the traditionally infallible Ondřej Vetchý and perfectly cast Hynek Čermák, who seems tailor-made for this role), this is a minor Czech film event that arrived quietly and unobtrusively in cinemas, but can now grow beyond its borders. 85% for a drama that only few would have dared attempt.
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Hřebejk and Jarchovský made a very disturbing film that makes you feel that it couldn't get any worse, but it actually can. In the film, the status of who is actually a monster and who is an asshole changes pretty quickly, and even towards the end it's not clear how much of an asshole the character actually is. Very well written and acted.
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While I don’t like comparing, a comparison with the Scandinavian movie The Hunt is at hand. It concerns a similar topic – the abuse of children. In this movie Jan Hřebejk really dug into it and the first half was flawless. Ondřej Vetchý, Anna Linhartová and Hynek Čermák showed really incredible acting performances. However, as soon as this part of the movie unexpectedly quickly closed, Aňa Geislerová entered the scene with the craziest character I’ve ever seen her play on TV and the whole movie suddenly entered a completely different dimension. I am not saying it was bad, I just think that these two ideas could easily function in two movies. And not just in one.
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Like plucking the petals of a daisy: “I liked it, I liked it not, I liked it, I liked it not…“. On the positive side, I should consider only the fact that, whereas I want to immediately forget about other Czech films, I still have to think about Innocence a day after seeing it. In my opinion, the stylistic contamination in the final third of the film is justified by the transition from a dispassionate detective investigation to a subjective narrative. The film belatedly gets its narrator and information about his past is conveyed to us as quickly as possible. The imposition of a personal point of view is the first dirty trick perpetrated against the viewer, whose sympathies for the person confessing are subsequently destroyed by that person’s dubious actions. Was it a plan or a confluence of coincidences? Inconsistency. The first one freed the innocent with her body, the second one made accusations. Not only the sins are similar, but so are the causes. Indifference. The narrative strangeness of Innocence, which particularly gives rise to strongly ambivalent feelings at the end (the roles of the guilty and the victim contradict how they were presented in the film), is significantly more inspiring than the shallow social-criticism level, the disturbingly conspicuous framework of the screenplay and the inconsistent integration of the characters into the plot (if the mentally disabled son was supposed to represent unassailable innocence, why does he completely disappear from the scene toward the end?). Innocence is a problematic film with a lot of flaws, but it deserves attention. 75%
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