The short stories about marriage that Vít Olmer wrote for Playboy magazine when Arnošt Lustig was its editor-in-chief are witty, often with absurd punchlines, and clearly show that the author is a keen observer of life around us. He selected five of them for his new Czech comedy, whose common denominator is actor Jiří Krampol, the main character in each of them.
Acting
Krampol's five faces of midlife masculine disaster
Writing
Lustig-era Playboy wit still sharp decades later
Direction
Olmer's surgical eye for Czech domestic absurdity
Director
Vít Olmer
Jiří Krampol
Michal, Divoký, Bimbo, Rozvinul, Hruška / de Grouchy
Eva Holubová
Divoká
Oldřich Vízner
Dr. Zawinul
Emília Vášáryová
japonská žena
Jana Paulová
Monika Kvasničková
Zawinulová
Svatopluk Schuller
Jan Skopeček
Rudolf Kubík
Jenda
Jan Kraus
Oldřich Navrátil
Petra Lustigová
Majka
Jan Přeučil
Jaroslava Obermaierová
Evelyna Steimarová
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Arnošt Lustig—Holocaust survivor, novelist, and briefly Playboy Czechoslovakia's editor—greenlit these stories in the 1990s, making this perhaps cinema's only Lustig-to-screen pipeline.
The title's 'Waterloo' references aren't Napoleonic defeat but rather the Czech slang for romantic catastrophe—fitting for a nation whose humor runs on pessimism.
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