Amit Kumar Agarwal
IFFI, the more popular term for the International Film Festival of India, opened its 44th edition with the screening of ‘Don Juans’, the latest film by one of the better known Czech film-director, Jiri Menzel.
IFFI, the more popular term for the International Film Festival of India, opened its 44th edition with the screening of ‘Don Juans’, the latest film by one of the better known Czech film-director, Jiri Menzel.
Menzel is also a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award at IFFI 2013. ‘Don Juans’ revolves around the rehearsal of Mozart’s Don
Giovanni at a regional Czech theatre. The movie is the 16th feature film
in Menzel’s long and illustrious career which began in the Communist
era in 1966 with ‘Closely Watched Trains’. It is an ode to the gentle
seducers of the world and the women who love them.
The middle aged Vitek (Jan Hartl) is the director of a small regional opera company who serially beds his sopranos. Then there’s elderly Jakub (Martin Huba), a Czech opera singer who’s made his career in USA but returns home to prove he still can perform. Vitek hires Jakub as the star of a production of Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni’- Don Juans- at the local opera house. Old friends despite the age gap, they share a bond as ageing Lotharios. Into their lives comes Marketa (Libuse Safrankova), an amateur singer, Jakub’s age, who solicits Vitek to help stage a children’s chorale in a theatre threatened by redevelopment. It turns out that all three have more in common than they know including a daughter born out of a wedlock and a granddaughter, both of whom had Don Juans of their own. “There’s a bit of Don Juan in every guy’, one woman says. “Every Don Juan leaves a teary-eyed girl in his wake”, says another. The film is treated by Menzel with a lively narrative, a fable where no one actually gets hurt.
The middle aged Vitek (Jan Hartl) is the director of a small regional opera company who serially beds his sopranos. Then there’s elderly Jakub (Martin Huba), a Czech opera singer who’s made his career in USA but returns home to prove he still can perform. Vitek hires Jakub as the star of a production of Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni’- Don Juans- at the local opera house. Old friends despite the age gap, they share a bond as ageing Lotharios. Into their lives comes Marketa (Libuse Safrankova), an amateur singer, Jakub’s age, who solicits Vitek to help stage a children’s chorale in a theatre threatened by redevelopment. It turns out that all three have more in common than they know including a daughter born out of a wedlock and a granddaughter, both of whom had Don Juans of their own. “There’s a bit of Don Juan in every guy’, one woman says. “Every Don Juan leaves a teary-eyed girl in his wake”, says another. The film is treated by Menzel with a lively narrative, a fable where no one actually gets hurt.
