Sixteen-year-old students of a grammar school are supposed to write essays on "Love". The class best student Andrea (Jaroslava Schallerová) writes about a patriotic love to a country as she has no experience with a partner love. She has been living alone with her divorced pretty mother Eva (Milena Dvorská), a dentist, for many years. Recently, however, Eva met her former school-days love at a graduates' party, nowadays a famous hockey goalkeeper Brukner (Frantisek Velecký). Also his marriage fell apart; he leaves the national team and decides to leave Prague for his home town and to share flat with Eva. He takes with him his son Petr (Oldrich Kaiser), in Andrea's age, who gets his last chance to finish a grammar school in the town.
Acting
Schallerová's controlled restraint masks volcanic teenage confusion.
Direction
Kachyňa frames desire through doorways and mirrors, never confrontation.
Writing
The essay motif brilliantly interrogates who gets to define 'love'.
Director
Karel Kachyňa
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made during the 'Normalisation' era, the film smuggles political critique through domestic intimacy—Andrea's 'patriotic love' reads as both sincere and subtly hollow under state socialism.
Jaroslava Schallerová was 16 during filming, same as Andrea; Kachyňa reportedly rehearsed the mother-daughter tension by keeping them deliberately separated on set.
XC
