Women weaponize tears from playground to grave — and you're next.
The episodic film MARBLES consists of several short stories about how women manipulate with men. About subtle blackmailings, about crying, about tears, about the ability to sacrifice oneself for a dream, about sex as a service, about the way we can use empathy. It all starts on the playground among children and death does not equal the end. As time goes by, a feminine mechanism of manipulation develops, shapes up, ripens until it reaches the stage of perfection. Individual short stories take place at a techno party as well as in a Catholic parsonage and they conclude in a content domestic routine of two old people which cannot be disrupted by anything – not even by death. The short stories about women of different age and lifestyle put together a story of one complete human life which was, thanks to the manipulation with others, lived according to the plan and at the same time and from the same reason wasted away.
Writing
Cynical interconnected vignettes spanning cradle to grave.
Direction
Dabrowská's unflinching gaze at uncomfortable truths.
Director
Olga Dabrowská
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Czech cinema's 2000s New Wave rarely exported — Dabrowská's feminist provocation stayed domestic.
The 2.0 TMDB rating suggests male reviewer sabotage — the film's thesis in action.
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