Up and Down

Reviewer: Maria Komodore
Rating (out of 5): ****

Old friends and compatriots Jan Hrebejk and Petr Jarchovsky have been making films together since 1999. Up and Down, which was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film in 2004, is the product of their forth (but not their last) collaboration.

Set in Prague, the film opens with petty crooks Goran (Zdenek Suchy) and Milan (Jan Budar) smuggling illegal immigrants into the Czech Republic when they get stuck with a little baby. Not knowing what to do with it, the two hoodlums take it to a fellow criminal who owns a pawnshop and who manages to sale the infant to Miluska (Natasha Burger). Miluska is a severely depressed sterile woman whose obsession with having a baby keeps feeding from her husband Franta's (Jiri Machacek) criminal record that prohibits him from adopting a child. But Hana (Ingrid Timkova), a financially comfortable woman who works for an immigration organization, is trying to find the baby and return it to its biological parents. In the mean time Hana's significant other Oto (veteran Czech actor Jan Triska) discovers that he has a brain tumor and decides to invite his boorish wife Vera (Emilia Vasaryova) and his expatriate son Martin (filmmaker Milos Forman's son Petr Forman), to a reconciliation dinner.

As you have probably already guessed Up and Down is one of those multi-character films like Paul Haggis' Crash (2005) and Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel (2006) in which the different characters featured in them intersect or overlap--a gimmick that for some mysterious reason attracts Oscar nominations. But unlike those aforementioned films, Up and Down is actually excellent. Not only does the film weave in many of the issues the Czech Republic inherited after the collapse of the USSR, but it also looks quite good. Photographed by Jan Malir, the eerily beautiful green and yellow hues that permeate the whole film adequately lend Up and Down a general feeling of malaise, which is in turn reflected in the class struggles and senses of guilt, hatred, and dissatisfaction its characters experience in a racist and opportunity-deprived world.

The DVD includes an informative "the making of" featurette.