Film Notes: Kolya

I stumbled across this DVD really by chance. I was noodling about ebay, and saw a quirky picture of a middle-aged bearded fellow, with a small boy on his shoulders, who was rather impishly putting his hands over the man's eyes. Jumping over to the Rotten Tomatoes site, I saw that this film had great reviews, and so grabbed it for not very much.

It turned out to be a charming, if sentimental, coming-of-age movie from Eastern Europe, set during the dying days of the Soviet system. The twist in the story is that person coming of age, is a middle-aged man! Louka, played delightfully by Zdenek Sverák, is a brilliant cellist, who has played with the Prague Philharmonic. Clashes between him and the Communist Party have resulted in him being reduced to playing at the local crematorium, for funerals. What seems to matter most to Louka however, is not ,subversive anti-communism, but his numerous affairs with fellow performers and cello students. His unattached, bachelor lifestyle, more typical of a twenty-year old, seems to have filled his days into his middle-years.

All this seems to unwind in a most unexpected way. Louka agrees to a marriage of convenience with a gorgeous Russian woman whose motivation is to get to the West. Her marriage document enables here to travel there from Czechoslovakia, which wouldn't be possible from Russia. Louka's motivation seems to be both financial and sexual, but to his consternation she dissappears almost immediately, leaving Louka with her young son; Kolya.

Those of us who are parents are aware of how much life changed when children arrived. In fact, our lives divide into the 'before' and 'after' their presence. Life without the busyness, exhaustion, joys and sorrows of children now seems barely imaginable. Young Kolya is the last thing that the selfish Louka is expecting, and much to his surprise it changes him in ways he can barely comprehend.

The film is really well-observed, which adds to its charm, and authenticity. This happens both at the level of adult-child interactions, of little Kolya's view of the world; and is loaded with wonderful period details from the latter years of the Soviet bloc. The film ends with twists in the story, both for Louka and Kolya, but also for the country as a whole. 

Anyone whose life has been turned upside down by children, or who was forced to suddenly grow-up when they became a parent; will smile knowingly at this film. Louka is certainly a more likeable character by the end of the film than he was at the start, but rather pleasingly he doesn't undergo a ludicrous character change like romcom writers seem to indulge in (The Proposal: fergoodnissakes!), but the love he develops for a child starts to shape him in new ways.

I thought it was a delightful film, amusing, wry, dated, well-observed, and with a charm that was quite lovely; and a nice twist in the tale.