Réalisation:
Radim ŠpačekPhotographie:
Vladimír SmutnýMusique:
Jakub KudláčActeurs·trices:
Filip Březina, Patrycja Volny, Zdeněk Piškula, Ondřej Malý, Alena Mihulová, Jan Hartl, Stanislav Majer, Jiří Roskot, Jan Mansfeld, Jiří Vojta (plus)Résumés(1)
Une histoire d’amour passionnée, de basketball et d’une vie gâchée par la politique. Le film commence en 1938, et l’histoire principale est celle de l’amour fatal de Franta, un jeune avocat et sportif, pour la danseuse Michelle rencontrée au championnat européen de basket-ball de l’après-guerre à Genève. Cette dernière a fui les régimes de Staline et d’Hitler. Leur histoire d’amour, en prise avec le contexte politique, sera aussi sous l’influence de deux individus antinomiques, l’entraîneur de Franta ainsi que le fonctionnaire communiste Hrabal – en 1951 le rideau de fer divisa l’Europe pour de longues années. (Czech-In Film Festival)
(plus)Critiques (4)
Sometimes you get intrigued by a good premise but disappointed by the boring story. This is a problem that occurs with Europeanfilms from time to time. In this particular case, it’s a real pity, because these boys would definitely deserve a great film story. We’ll have to wait a few years for that. Let’s see if our basketball team can make the Olympics next year and this premise will get a second chance. Maybe it will turn out better than Golden Sting.
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You can win the European Championship even with a mess in coaching, a mess in tactics, and the team staying in a brothel. It will get worse when the red mess gets involved... The music tries to give drive to the images, but they don’t listen, and the characters keep playing signals that the audience has long since deciphered. One extra star out of six for the variability of Sad Footage, which sometimes completely distracted me from what was happening in the scene. I never thought I’d say this, but Jakub Bažant is better at commenting on basketball than writing scripts.
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Radim Špaček's feature films are a bigger mystery to me every year. This is his second retro film, and while Golden Sting looks very appealing at first glance, it's neither Dark Blue World nor Fair Play. A good retro film should be based primarily on a clearly realized narrative, and if the plot takes place in a longer period of the very well-known Czech history after 1938, the main characters must age. This aspect did not succeed by any stretch of the imagination. All the partial positives are only outlined here, and I see great potential in them, but it has remained unused to no avail. The film features a cohort of experienced actors led by Hartl and Mihulová and Poullain, but unfortunately, the whole thing is based on a young generation of actors who lack more confident leadership and maturity in their own right. The overly large team of writers didn't help the result much either.
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An interesting story shot in an absolutely captivating way - I really liked it! So much so that I wasn’t even bothered by some of the possibly predictable situations, twists, etc. Great new and seasoned actors, magnificent camera by Vladimir Smutný, directing ideas... And that soundtrack! I hope the album will come out some day, because I have never heard such a mixture of classical music, period swing and contemporary electronica (with a bold remix of the national anthem in the closing credits) in Czech film. If I didn't know who composed it, I'd guess Daniel Pemberton, maybe.
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