It’s 14 years since veteran Czech director Jirí Menzel’s last film, so this is a welcome release. Adapted, like his Oscar-winner Closely Observed Trains, from a novel by Bohumil Hrabal, it shares much of that film’s quirky humour and quiet sense of loss.
Our pocket-sized hero (Ivan Barnev), whose stature belies his rampant ambition, rises rapidly in the luxury hotel world of pre-war Prague, but
he’s too fixated on personal success to sense the coming storm. Satire with the gentlest of bites. No extras.
Philip Kemp
