Sensitive Person

“Growing old isn’t for sissies,” states one of the characters from Jáchym Topol’s acclaimed novel, which, according to one reviewer, is “a comical and brutal report from the flipside of life” and now appears loosely adapted into a film by Tomáš Klein, one of the most talented Czech directors. This darkly grotesque drama sets off down more than one path. There’s the real path – at times grim, at times crazy – via which Dad Mour, an itinerant actor, his wife Mum and their two sons try to return home; and then there’s the imaginary one – more meandering and dusty – along which stirring intellectual youthfulness (or immaturity, as pessimists would have it) feuds with circumstances that force the protagonist to acquire wisdom. A restless and zesty cinematic feerie about love, fear of loneliness, and sons gazing intently at their father.