Cosy Dens
| Cosy Dens | |
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| Directed by | Jan Hřebejk |
| Produced by | Pavel Borovan Ondřej Trojan |
| Written by | Petr Jarchovský Petr Šabach |
| Starring |
Miroslav Donutil Jiří Kodet Simona Stašová Emília Vášáryová Bolek Polívka |
| Music by | Ivan Hlas Ivan Kral |
| Cinematography | Jan Malíř |
| Edited by | Vladimír Barák |
| Distributed by | Česká televize |
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Release date
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Running time
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115 minutes |
| Country | Czech Republic |
| Language | Czech |
Cosy Dens (Czech: Pelíšky) is a 1999 Czech film directed by Jan Hřebejk. It is loosely based on the novel Hovno Hoří (Czech: "Flaming Feces") by Petr Šabach.
Pelíšky is a bittersweet coming-of-age story set in the months from Christmas 1967 leading up to the ill-fated 1968 Prague Spring. Teenager Michal Šebek (Michael Beran) has a crush on his upstairs neighbor, Jindřiška Krausová (Kristýna Nováková). Michal's family is headed by a stubborn army officer who is a firm supporter of the communist system and who believes that communist technology will eventually triumph over western imperialist capitalism, while Jindřiška's father is an ardent foe of the Communists and a war hero, who has been imprisoned several times because of his outspoken opposition to the regime; he believes that "the Bolsheviks have a year at most, maybe two". In contrast, the younger generation couldn't care less for politics. Instead, Michal sports a Beatles mop-top while Elien (Ondřej Brousek), the local hipster whose parents live in the USA, runs a local film group specialising in Hollywood and pre-war French films, while Jindřiška becomes Elien's girlfriend. After a wedding that unites the families, the film ends with the news breaking of the invasion of the Warsaw Pact.
A dispute in the film illustrates the tension between the nationalistic and fervently anti-Communist father and Jindřiška, who is more apolitical. Jindřiška dares to suggest that her mother’s dumplings are closer to Italian gnocchi than traditional Czech knedliky (translated as "Viennese dumplings" in the English subtitles), sending her father into a rage. The plastic spoon on the poster refers to the gifts, miracles of "socialist science", that a Šebek uncle keeps sending the family and which always fail to perform as promised, humiliating the Mr. Šebek. Both cases foreshadow how the political hopes of the fathers are destroyed by the coming Soviet invasion.
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