One million viewers since its release at the beginning of March: one in every ten Czechs has seen Empties by Jan Sverak, making it one of the biggest successes in Czech cinema history.

But this is hardly a surprise. In the Czech Republic, national cinema has often had one of the highest market shares in Europe, alongside France and Denmark. Nevertheless, at least two factors set apart this new film by the father and son Sverak team (the father Zdenek writes the script and acts under the direction of his son Jan).

Firstly, considering just the figures, the film broke the record for the first weekend of a Czech production, and is now closing in on the admissions record set in 2001 by the big-budget film Dark Blue World, also by Jan Sverak (1,2 million admissions). Secondly, the Sveraks are already (relatively) well known by European audiences. Ten years ago Kolya - also directed by Jan and written by and featuring Zdenek - won the Oscar for best foreign film and attracted audiences of over 3 million in Europe, including 624,000 in Germany, 273,000 in Italy and 173,000 in France.

With this new film, whose original title Vratné Lahve literally means "returnable bottles," Zdenek Sverak, a scriptwriter but also one of his country´s most famous actors, plays the tragic-comic figure of a retired man with a penchant for women and booze, a role which has proved a real crowd-pleaser.

Shown in competition at the recent Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Empties won a special mention for its screenplay. Sold by the English company Portobello Pictures, notably in Benelux (Lumière), Greece (Audiovisual), Italy (Fandango), Canada and Australia, the film has not yet been distributed outside the Czech Republic. Noteworthy is the participation of actress Tatiana Vilhelmova, who played one of the lead roles in Something like Happiness (Stesti), by Bohdan Slama.

Yet there is no reason for these facts to cast a shadow over the other great sensation of the year. With I Served the King of England, Jiri Menzel, a key figure in the Czech New Wave of the 1960s beside Milos Forman, has made a strong comeback, attracting 700,000 filmgoers and taking the principle national prizes at the most recent Czech Lion Annual Movie Awards.

Once again, notably after Closely Watched Trains, Menzel has adapted a work by Bohumil Hrabal, which allows him to use comedy in scrutinising his country´s past. The principal figure is a little money-hungry waiter in the 1930s, who is both talented (at seducing women) and naïve (about the rise of Nazism). After a brief period of post-war glory he becomes a worker. His flashbacks about the past are the pretext for evoking certain dark hours in Czechoslovakian history.

Sold by Bavaria Film International, notably in China, Latin America and South Korea, the film has been released in Slovakia and Poland, and is due to be distributed in Hungary in September.


Jean-Baptiste Selliez

Empties :
http://www.portobellopictures.com
http://www.sverak.cz
http://www.vratnelahve.cz

I Served the King of England :
http://www.bavaria-film-international.de
http://www.anglickykral.cz

Sources: European Audiovisual Observatory and ufd.cz