MOVIE
REVIEW
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the Plot
A Non-Czech Speaker Attempts to Fathom Wild Beer
Prague, September 1995by David Speranza
As a novice Czech-speaker, I often get the masochistic urge to decipher some of the local cinema. This derives partly from a desire to improve my language skills, but mostly from a need to avoid the current deluge of Hollywood movies based on bad TV shows. Unfortunately, on a scale from 1 to 10 my Czech would rate a Feeble, so I'm often clueless as to what I'm watching.
Case in point: the recent Czech release, Divoké Pivo, a.k.a. Wild Beer. My confusion set in almost at once: Was the lead actress, Markéta Hrubesová, actually playing two parts, or was the costume designer just having a bit of fun? Why else would our heroine keep alternating between a long white frock and a power mini-skirt with garters and heels?
But then I realized I was watching that most intriguing of sub-genres, the "evil twin" movie—a discovery which only came once I'd sifted out the characters' names from the dialogue: There was Dobromila, the "good, dear" one, and Evelina, the, well, evil one.
In the film's opening scene (following a credit sequence wherein a poorly-dubbed balladeer relates what I presume is some relevant, beer-tinged tale), Dobromila is rescued from a de Sade-like cult by a pair of dimwitted cops. This act inexplicably ostracizes her from the cult, and after several puzzling attempts at re-entry, she is cast out into the world.
We soon learn she has a disturbing talent to make her hair glow yellow and to cause whatever bottle of beer she's looking at to do the same—causing the imbiber to suddenly say things he normally wouldn't, much to the amusement and/or consternation of onlookers (and occasional puzzled moviegoers). This power, as far as I could tell, is somehow connected to Dobromila's membership in the aforementioned cult, which operates in the basement of the town brewery.
Meanwhile, the evil Evelina is first seen making a deal with the mayor, the substance of which seems to be that the mayor will have sex with her whenever the plot starts to sag. Later, however, I was able to surmise that she was actually just his secretary. This revelation came during a scene which revealed she actually wasn't his secretary, but was in fact behind the Evil Plot to sell/buy/close down/re-open the town brewery (take your pick—I missed a crucial verb). I could tell she was in charge because the Bad Guy she pulled aside for a quick pow-wow kept nodding, "Yes, Boss... Yes, Boss."
Dobromila, meanwhile, takes to riding around town in a horse-drawn beer cart with young Radek (rhymes with Radegast [a popular Czech beer]). Their job, as far as I could tell, is to dispense free beer to the townspeople, pausing only occasionally to watch Dobromila do her glowing-hair-and-beer trick on some unsuspecting guzzler.
It was all a bit hazy, especially the two guys driving around in a truck full of Marlboro cigarettes. But most disturbing was the bulky man in the white suit with the voice of a female impersonator and hair resembling an animal pelt. From what I could tell, this was never properly explained.
Soon all the clandestine meetings and machinations and sex scenes converge in a seamless bit of incomprehension, culminating with a nude swim-slash-fight scene and a tense chase through the brewery. Since the chase contained very little dialogue, I was able to appreciate its many subtleties, from the two Bad Guys hiding in a vat of beer, to the cop hunting people with a water hose, to Evelina passing herself off as Dobromila. However, I never did understand why Radek and Dobromila paused mid-chase to make love beneath crates of glowing beer—unless it was because they were already naked from their swim and somehow knew the credits were coming.
It all ends happily, of course, with Evelina vanquished and the brewery a) saved, b) sold, or c) closed down. After the final kiss, we return to the badly-dubbed balladeer, who rousingly concludes his tale of "Dobromila and the Beer Cult."
Probably the only clear thing about the film was why it was made in the first place: on the poster in the lobby were displayed the logos for three beers produced at the Southern Czech Brewery—the very beers we'd just seen product-placed shamelessly throughout the film. I didn't see any Philip Morris logos, but in retrospect I wonder if perhaps they had a helping hand too (which would explain the mystery of the mixed-up Marlboro men).
Was it possible I stumbled into a feature-length commercial by mistake? When the fine print is in a foreign tongue, confusion is your only guide.
