Kráska v nesnázích

Hřebejk is good at making movies. He understands the technical side, always knows how to pick the right actors and most of the time he can get the best performances of their careers out of them. He’s talented at picking mood-creating songs and edits them amazingly well into the picture. The form of his movies is cultivated. All of the above also applies to Beauty in Trouble. Despite that, it is not a good movie. One aspect is responsible for holding Hřebejk back. That’s right, it’s the screenwriter Jarkovský. I don’t want to do him wrong, he’s still in a class of his own when it comes to individual scenes, especially confrontational ones. But he is no good at screenplays as a whole. In Cosy Dens and Divided We Fall it wasn’t as apparent. In Pupendo, Želary, Out of the City, Up and Down and now Beauty in Trouble he skillfully kills it. However I must admit that writing a movie that has nothing to say in a way that it isn’t completely obvious requires a good chunk of a talent too. Beauty in Trouble is beautiful to watch and listen to. The acting is perfectly executed. And it has nothing to say. Pleasant to watch once, but for a creator of Hrebejk`s quality, that is too little. (05.12.2007)

I avoided Beauty in Trouble for some time because I had no desire to find out why this film had become a symbol of the decline of Czech drama by Jan Hřebejk. But chance ultimately wanted me to give it a try. I understand the attempt to elevate the subgenre of "table drama," but I am left perplexed by the manner in which they strummed through sleep-inducing songs. Hřebejk and Petr Jarchovský made a film and felt that this time they were truly telling the story of the present. They didn't add any funny characters, they peeked into the current image of life, and the audience should rejoice at how ruthlessly the script reveals the nation's soul. And the fact that it didn't quite happen that way, and the audience ranged from cautious admirers to mocking opponents, they couldn't quite overcome. This is not my judgment, but a reaction to how Hřebejk, regardless of the audience's response, began to anoint himself as a benevolent master of the genre who gives us what we want. As such, I still can't forget the interview in which the director comes back to Beauty in Trouble with arguments that even though critics tore it apart, he KNOWS that he made a good film and that creating a genuine, unadulterated, and human spectacle with heart is much more demanding than "multiplying elves on a computer with a load of money." And that's what surprises and saddens me the most about all the Troubles. The fact that the director, at the first sign of criticism or anything other than boundless flattery from his cushy and clinging audience, turned himself into a caricature of almost Troskovský-like proportions, which I couldn't and didn't want to peel off from him for many years, and even a decade later, occasionally flickers through my mind. And that's why it's such a big surprise when the film ends and the whole bubble bursts during the final credits. It remains an ordinary film, in which this patriot inconspicuously places Glen Hansard songs between the most absurd outbursts from Jiří Schmitzer, who curses as much as possible, and a dose of sadly animalistic sex. In other words, it's a true display of the Czech mendacity he wants so desperately to capture perfectly in his films. (15.09.2008)

The acting performances were quite okay. What I wasn’t impressed with was the writing. If I understand the message correctly, all those who hadn't fled abroad during the communist regime degenerated into massive assholes (sorry, but I couldn’t come up with a more fitting expression), while the heroic emigrants came back with an aura of virtue and righteousness. Well, I’m not buying this, I would say the opposite is true. (24.04.2020)

I absolutely don't understand what this film was supposed to be about. Jarchovsky's script had already indicated a certain degree of chaos during Loop the Loop, but at least therein clear content and intention arose from the chaos. While watching Beauty in Trouble, I was not able to not catch up with the thought processes (if indeed there even were any). The confused swarm of characters in the disorganized "story", which could be summed up, with a certain degree of arrogance and rudeness, into the sentence "old emigrants are attentive, but a stupid Czech car mechanic fucks better". Geislerová in a traditionally vulgar position, charming Abrhám and bile Šmicer - there certainly was an effort to have a colorful panopticon of characters. However, only the latter has persuasiveness within himself. To me, the other characters felt like puppets in a boring game, punctured with really nice music. In addition to Jarchovský, I would also like to note that Hřebejk's company is moving toward complete bankruptcy. If I was able to find a few interesting ideas in Pupendo and Loop the Loop, I didn't stumble on any of them in Beauty in Trouble. (15.10.2007)

The social drama has never built a great name among the working classes here. And poor Hřebejk has so far made a name for himself with these classes with his favorite Christmas classics about how those outer communists hurt us and we miserably lived under them, and there was nothing we could do about it. Suddenly, he came up with a modern story about characters who resist sympathies and do not develop, yet they are also victims of circumstances for which they are not entirely responsible. And just as many people insist that people are unhappy because they do not try hard enough not to be, Beauty in Trouble suffered a viewer backlash for not trying hard enough to be sympathetic to the viewers. Is it wrong? Of course not. Especially when we embrace Hřebejk's cinema of discomfort, where characters are put into very uncomfortable situations that he lets linger for too long (every despotic monologue by Jiří Schmitzer is absolute gold, which left me gasping with sadistic laughter, hello to my grandpa here), we gain the space to see how well some dialogue quirks, movements, or use of various artifacts are captured here. The aptness and "unscrupulousness" of this film really drive me to give it the highest rating, but unfortunately, technically it cannot be given to films that end with songs by Hansard. It really cannot be done. I clicked on the fifth one, but it didn't work. (11.07.2022)