Brats

"Brats" is a 2005 Czech movie which we saw tonight at the Avalon (one Wednesday each month, another award winning Czech film). We enjoyed it.

A couple has trouble having children, and adopts two boys, both of gypsy parentage. Then they have one of their own. The kids are hard to handle--the adopted boys have a hard time focusing and an easy time getting into trouble. The younger son has a serious asthma condition. They move from Prague to an exurban village for the fresh air, and hopefully for good neighbors (the Prague neighbors did not take to the gypsy boys).

It does not work out. The kids have trouble adjusting. The parents (and especially the mother) are isolated and overstressed. And one man in particular is out to get the kids, falsely accusing them of vandalism and calling them 'black bastards'.

Watching all of the bickering between the kids and between the parents, combined with the youngest boy's medical condition, and the problems with the neighbors, and the continual bullying and ribbing between all of the children made me very nervous. In addition, some weird camera work (a lot of scenes from above, a lot of face focusing, and a lot of blurred images)are disturbing.

Nevertheless, the movie is enjoyable, draws you in and keeps you going. I'd recommend it.

By the way, the boys are brats. But the Czech title of the film is "Smradi", which is translated as "smell" or "stench". This would be an ambiguous title. What stinks? Is it the gypsy kids, as the bigots think? Or is it the bigots? Or is it everything in the Czech Republic.

Why did they translate the title into English as "Brats". On the one hand, the boys are all brats, but "brats" is a very unsympathetic word, and the kids are very definitely meant to be objects of sympathy. But the three boys are also, of course, brothers, and the Czech word for "brothers" is "bratri". So the English title also has multiple meanings, but is more in the nature of a double entendre than it is ambiguous in the way Smradi is.