Zuzana Kirchnerov’s “Caravan” “Caravan” film on a series of idyllic vacation scenes. A wide stroke of a quiet pool. A coarse beach ball with iridescent sequins inside. Laning sun rays bouncing lazily from the surface of the swimming pool. A whispering whispering voice, “It’s going to be nice, David. You’ll see.” The whisper is revealed as a mother, reassuring her child as they are next to each other in the bed under a white sheet. If Terrence Malick directed an advertisement for an Italian holiday home, it would go something like this sequence. However, the idyll is a short -term mirage.
Shot mainly in Italy Reggio Calabria, as well as in Bologna and in the Czech Republic, this is the story of Mom Ester of 45 years (Ana Geislerova) and David, 15 (David Vodstrcil), whose holidays with friends of the middle class are disturbed when the pair is requested by the family with which they are supposed to remain in a caravan. This unexpected request is precipitated by the inability of friends to face the behavior of David: it is intellectually disabled, which sometimes translates into explosive physical explosions. Exhausted and stung after hearing a condescending conversation on David, Ester leaves in the caravan, taking his son on an impromptu road, during which they are joined by the free spirit of Livewire Zuza (Juliana Brutovska).
“Caravan” marks the return of Czech cinema to the official selection in Cannes after a gap of 30 years, and so far, Kirchnerová is also the only Czech filmmaker to have won the Prix Prime Prix at the CINE? The objective of his work to date on the obligations of caregivers probably provides the answer. Based on short film work on a fight for a teenager to provide care for a lingering grandparent (BABA) and a document-drama following four women during pregnancy (“four pregnancies”), the “caravan” is a film firmly rooted in the experience of what is to provide full-time care to another human being while trying to exist as you. In the case of Ester, the Self is what carries most of his work, his existence as something beyond the caregiver has gradually eroded, endless in sight.
Partly following the road format, “Caravan” is not closely traced, with vignettes which take place in a fairly interchangeable order while ESTER, David and Zuza try to make their way in the world. The subject of sex rises in several ways, sometimes in relation to the status of David as a curious adolescent, but more often around his mother, while ESTER tries to navigate what the romance might look like for someone in his situation.
Dating as a parent alone is already in charge of the dilemma in the way, when and if to disclose the existence of your child, a decision as much about the well-being of the child as anything else, but which also tends to confer the status of a secret which must be managed on a single parenting. Ester is dealing with very specific circumstances in addition to this, managing the experience of the world of his son in a different way from the majority experience of the parenting of a adolescent.
An out -of -competition scene in Ester’s own love life manages an ambiguity around sexual consent in a way that feels completely unique: Ester is offered by an old farmer who used and zuza as occasional workers. At first, uncertain, Ester allows the guy to touch her, and as a spectator, the scene is ambiguous. For Zuza, when she comes across them, she is clearly an old dirty man binding her friend, and she reacts with direct anger, whisking Ester and out of the farm. Shortly after, Ester founded in tears, doubling the ambiguity of the spectator’s experience, before she clarified: she really had fun. Zuza is all apologies and laughter.
David, meanwhile, “performs this fishing on the chin”, as Zuza says, and knowing exactly how to manage his emerging interest in other bodies is a question that the film leaves quite open. Rooted in Kirchnerová’s own life, raising a child with Down syndrome and autism, the film has a fundamental tenderness everywhere, while more difficult scenes gain their place at the table with their feeling of authenticity and personal testimony.
Like a small child, David expresses his anger physically and without restraint, although he has the strength of a robust young man. He expresses his anger without any filter, but it is not his fault – which does not change the fact that his punches and his stripes cause serious damage. Watch Ester trying to navigate with love, but little external support is undeniably difficult.
Nothing here goes anywhere narrative unexpected, but it’s okay. With some films, the pleasure is to get there, and with others, the same goes for intentional discomfort. It is a film determined to take you on a sometimes sentimental but often painful journey, and it does so in a generally clear way, born from experience.
