Josef (Saša Rašilov) and Miluška (Lenka Vlasáková) have been married for ever and ever. Miluška teaches aerobics and her husband and teenage daughter tirelessly includes care. Joseph loves his wife, but also has a weakness for younger and more beautiful women. Their marriage, along with Joseph's bankrupt publication, is slowly rumbling. Aunt Marta (Vilma Cibulkova), who has a mad plan, rescues the collapsing marriage and the Joseph publishing house, comes to rescue. As an experienced psychologist working in a marital counseling, she directs the husbands to infidelity - she must be caught in flagranti. Crazy game can start ..
Premiere: February 22, 2018
Trailer
Interview with Milan Cieslar, director of the film
What happened to the creation of the film Eternal Unfaithful, was it a theatrical play?
Yes, it's from Jan Mika, who is my old classmate from FAMU. I am grateful to him for the nice screenplay of Rain Fairies, which was a very nice work and a beautiful classic fairy tale. About a year later, I asked him to think about something for the film. He told me he was, but he was interested in comedy. I was a little bit surprised because I do not skimp on comedies in the first place, it is extremely difficult and perhaps ungrateful. He sent me the subject we somehow developed. He is the author who can write for the film, so we worked for two years and this year, that is, the third year, we recorded it. I was interested in the scenario being a pure crazy comedy and at the same time a more serious background. I do not have a very postmodern mix of genres, or just a simple smile record of interpersonal relationships, which is a common model of Czech cinematography. Films are mostly on the edge of a comedy, they are relationship stories, and more or less legitimately they are called comedies, which in my opinion is often a bit of a scam to the viewer. I think the comedy should be a pure genre, entertain and be a centimeter above reality. And despite this, get to some more serious topics. This is a difficult task for the author. I do not see so many scriptwriters who would approach it this way, but rather there is a tendency to look at the world with irony and sitcom and somehow to mix it together without dramatic connections. Few people want to make a comedy by Aristotle, and with exaggeration. I am a supporter, even in comedy, of some inner dramaticness, I recall that somebody likes hot (Some Like It Hot) on the script workshops, because it is a perfect script. I also admire Bogdanovich What's up, Doctor? (What's Up, Doctor?), Which are amazing types of comedy, the top of the genre.
So, your comedy will not just be about the situation ...?
It's about the couple who is going through the marital crisis, they are together for 25 years. I am alone when I understand these problems, maybe I have gone through something similar. The author looks at it from a certain point of view, with humor about thirty centimeters above reality, but at the end is a message, humanly comprehensible.
How did you choose the actors?
I always try to cast the famous actors differently, into roles that are different from those in which viewers have seen them before it was not the first cast - or trying to find new types, which is the case of Anita Kraus in Spindle. It's hard to bring the script, you have to fund it, and in the case of comedy it's out of state support - I really do not remember the last two years of a pure comedy that would be supported by the State Fund for Cinematography. It is funded by television, sponsors, the private sector ...
And these subjects speak to the cast?
That's what I meant. The first thing is to read the script and everyone wants to see five actors in the roles who are still playing in these roles. They are good actors, but with all due respect, they can not play twenty films. Televisions are popular with viewers, on the contrary, they want the five actors in the twenty films to play. We had some problems with the cast, I wanted comedy actors, but they were also actors. That's why I reached for Sasha Rashilov, who may not be a pronounced Czech top star, but he did it perfectly. Vilma Cibulková, despite being a dramatic actress, as a aunt who arrives in the family and is a motor of plot, found herself a great comic exaggeration in her speech. Then there is a great Lenka Vlasáková, who has a great comic hub. Not to mention the comicality of Pavel Kříže ...
Which target group will this film focus on?
Probably for a group over thirty. When the screenwriter saw the cut of the film, he said the film was serious despite all the fun. I personally think that it will not be for the teenagers. But for viewers twenty-five or thirty plus, it will be understandable. On the other hand, there are situations such as lying in the relationship, infidelity, which even younger audiences can go through. To teach teenagers, it was not our intention either.
Do you have room for improvisation?
I do not give them a screenplay on cameras. Sometimes they want it, I promise them and then I will not. And I will tell the plot to the spot, I will defer it in the form of five to ten plain sentences. I want them to improvise and play the scene in their own words as a spontaneous reaction. I have a nice memory when I was teaching Karel Dobré and Monika Hilmer for the scene when I was in the Spring of Life, when he is not capable of sex because of some homosexual inclinations. I told them a few important sentences and they played it without script. Then we shot it and it was not it. They were already in the costume, they knew the script, the illuminated scene, the props. So I pulled out the small test tape cassette and they were trying to play it like it did for the first time.
Would you also engage in non-actors?
Many years ago, I filmed the film How Tasteful Death by Ladislav Mňaček. A week or two before filming, a very promising young theater actor for irrational reasons refused to play, although everything had already been arranged. I searched for and found non-star Otta Sram of Pilsen at that time. I was very happy and the kid might have played better than the actor. I do not know what Ota was doing and doing today. Then he convinced me at the camera test. There are many film actors who are not graduates. Perhaps Jiří Mádl was in the beginning a divine naturalist. When I looked for Colette's lead role, he convinced me that he was the best. It's not about any education, some actors empathy people have or not have.
In your portfolio, do you have a series of shows about how different you are from film making?
I did two and I have to say that it's very interesting and nice work from the beginning. I do not know the first two parts, how it turns out how actors, characters will work. But when I cut the first two parts, and I know that this will work like that, say, twelve times, then it stops me from having fun. I like the uncertainty of what's on the edge of trouble. I occupy the actors with the knowledge that if I do not know how it will go out, it is more exciting for me. Knowing what it looks like at the end is a cliché for me and I prefer to avoid it.
How do you climb to the cliché that laughing at the place does not mean laughing in the auditorium?
I think that's true. I've tried it a bit. The comedy is never so profitable that I could rotate it for an unlimited number of days. It's really shit, we worked from eight o'clock to eight in the morning, walked home tired, and it was easy and funny. I went through old Barrandov when comedy actors, such as the acting bards, carried a bunch of stories that sounded like this. Sometimes their own filming was more fun than what they were filming. At that time there was more time for all. I can say that mostly good entertainment in front of the camera and behind it means less laughter in the cinema.
Source: tz, presskit; edited editorial