When the Cat Comes

"The romance between Robert and Diana has a swooning roundelay feel and Vásáryová is a gorgeous stunner in her crimson one-piece dress, whereas Brodský is an all-too hangdog nonentity that their mismatch involuntarily betrays a self-pleasing masculine fantasy. But Svatopluk Havelka's accompanying score is a lush orchestral phenomenon, WHEN THE CAT COMES is more a musical fantasy than a straight-faced parable about human nature. Plus the implementation of children as the ultimate symbol of conscience is again, an over-simplified ideal that seems more farcical than its intention in its end result.

That said, Jasný's film is a testimony of the ceaseless wellspring that generates Czechoslovak New Wave movement, the imaginings, the innovations, the forms of expression, and the pursuit of aestheticizing, which is different from other motion pictures elsewhere in the world at that time. Its mentality may sometimes err on the side of naivety and rigidity, which creates a unique situation where the overflowing creativity clashes with an ideological stasis, a fascinating geopolitical aspect of the movement."

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