Flower Buds

FLOWER BUDS, winner of four top Czech film prizes, is a grimly comedic family drama. It's Christmastime in a nameless small industrial town whose salient feature is its smoking chimneys. Jarda is an indifferent train signalman more intent on fashioning matchstick ships in bottles than attending to his duties. Once his shift ends, he takes his meager earnings and deposits them into slot machines at the neighborhood pub. Jarda's gambling addiction renders him oblivious to his family's needs: son Honza, in love with an exotic dancer, grows pot in an abandoned warehouse; daughter Agata discovers she's pregnant; long-suffering wife Kamilla cleans toilets at the train station. Meanwhile, the local women are working on a dance show they hope will recapture their crowning glory from 1987 when they were “Flower Buds” at a state-sponsored “festival of physical culture.” Nobody's going anywhere on those trains that pass through the night. Still, hope springs eternal; maybe life will improve once winter is over. (In Czech with subtitles) – B.B.