UP AND DOWN
Directed by: Jan Hrebejk.
Produced by: Ondrej Trojan.
Written by: Petr Jarchovsky & Jan Hrebejk.
Director of Photography: Jan Malir.
Edited by: Vladimir Barak.
Music by: Ales Brezina.
Released by: Sony Pictures Classics.
Language: Czech with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: Czech Republic. 108 min. Rated: R.
With: Petr Forman, Emilia Vasaryova, Natasa Burger, Jiri Machacek, Jan Triska, Ingrid Timkova & Kristyna Liska-Bokova.

One night near the Czech-Slovak border, two smugglers discover that their truckload of illegal South Asian immigrants have left behind a baby. The abandoned infant is eventually sold to a childless couple, Mila (Natasa Burger) and Franta (Jiri Machacek), leading them into a life of dangerous secrecy with their dark-skinned child.

After the aging bourgeois professor Otto (Jan Triska) collapses while teaching, he finally decides to contact his estranged son Martin (Petr Forman), who has been living in Australia for 20 years. Martin agrees to go back to Prague and also convinces his mother, Otto’s embittered wife Vera (Emilia Vasaryova), to come along. With both gravity and humor, the film brings the family Otto had once abandoned with the one he has taken up in exchange - his new companion Hana (Ingrid Timkova), a worker in a refugee aid center, and their teenage daughter Lenka (Kristyna Liska-Bokova).

Whether it is the threat of Nazi occupation in 2000’s Divided We Fall or the class conflict between immigrants and natives in Up and Down, writers Jan Hrebejk and Petr Jarchovsky derive drama out of claustrophobic households. As in Divided We Fall, it is the infant - representative of rebirth in a disparate nation - that churns the fates.

For his first contemporary film, the cinematography and narrative style of Up and Down are a departure for Hrebejk. The intricate plot that ultimately connects the two families and the bleak shots of urban life tinted in blue are evocative of such films as Traffic or even 21 Grams. This new style, however, deters the rich, leisurely encounters that allows the viewer to undeniably feel for the delightful characters in Divided We Fall. Yet this disparity and bleakness may be exactly what the film seeks to portray. A resolution for the characters in Up and Down is impossible; their only choice is to continue as is. Marie Iida
February 25, 2005