Film says something about growing old
VIDEO VIPER with Bob Lebzelter for Dec. 5, 2008
Frantisek and his wife couldn’t be more different in the 2001 film “Autumn Spring.”
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Frantisek, played by Vlastimil Brodsky, and his friend Eda, played by Stanislav Zindulka, are in their 70s but stay young by continually pulling pranks.
One of their favorites is to play a rich, retired artist interested in buying a palatial home, preferably with an orchard and maybe a hunting lodge. They even get the would-be seller to kick in for a limo. One plays the rich guy, the other his aide.
They also become ticket police in the subway, checking for tickets from young ladies. When the girls don’t have them, the pair settles for kisses.
The old friends enjoy life and despite their ages, stay young with their pranks. Sure, they might miss a birthday party with their grandchildren, but it’s one of the consequences they learn to live with.
Frantisek’s wife, Emilie, (Stella Zázvorková) is just the opposite. She keeps jars of money around to save for their funerals. She takes her husband for a walk to a cemetery where she shows him a plot they can obtain cheaply because the family that owns it has already died out!
She is practical and thrifty and has spent her life trying to tame her husband.
When their son covets their apartment and tries to get them to move into a retirement center and leave the apartment to him, she thinks it’s a great idea. He gets angry.
He is anything but thrifty. When the people learn Frantisek and his friend were pulling a prank at the mansion, they hand him a bill for costs incurred and threaten legal action.
The pair’s attempts at raising the money result in them losing what they had.
When wife does her regular counting of funeral money, he tells her the money is gone. When he goes to his friend’s house to allow her to cool off, he creates another misstep, he has the friend call and say Frantisek has died.
Wife isn’t so distraught, believing her husband is dead, that she can’t stop at the funeral home, purchase a casket and have it delivered to where he supposedly has died.
The couple learn more about each other in the final minutes of the film than in the rest of lives together.
“Autumn Spring,” or “Babi leto” in its native Czech Republic, is part charming, part whimsical, part tragedy and it reminds us you can still be a rebel in advanced age, even as a grandfather.
AUTUMN SPRING • Directed by Vladimír Michálek • Story and screenplay by Jirí Hubac • Runtime: 95 minutes • Rated PG -13 for language • In Czechoslavakian with English subtitles • 312 stars out of 4
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