Film Archive

US 2

Czech Films 2014–2015 2015 / MY 2 / Czech Republic 2014

A love story about a surprise romance between a deceived wife and her gay hairstylist. The debut by Slobodanka Radun unfolds in contemporary Prague which, thanks to the film’s clear artistic vision, appears as a modern and volatile metropolis.

Synopsis

Thirty-year-old Ema is married to a womaniser. She feels degraded and refuses to accept her situation, so she decides to leave her husband. In the middle of the night she finds herself knocking on the door of her hairstylist, Tony. The latter’s eccentric lifestyle is somewhat alien to Ema; what’s more, she hardly knows him. But this is what attracts her to Tony, who, fairly untypically for a Czech film, is portrayed as an understated homosexual. Ema’s flight infuriates her parents, however, who want their daughter to return to her husband immediately. “Practically all of us have come across someone like Ema, and probably the only person who can really understand what she’s going through is a gay man,” says director Slobodanka Radun, who created the screenplay with writer Radka Denemarková. The film betrays a sophisticated visual and musical style: for her directorial debut Radun sought the assistance of numerous Czech artistic individuals whose sense of elegance shaped the backdrop of contemporary Prague; the city thus acquires prominence as the third player in the film.

Šimon Šafránek

About the film

99 min / Color, DCP

Director Slobodanka Radun / Screenplay Radka Denemarková, Slobodanka Radun / Dir. of Photography Jiří Málek / Music Jan P. Muchow / Editor Jiří Brožek / Art Director Petr Kunc / Producer Vratislav Šlajer / Production Bionaut / Coproduction Česká televize, Slobodanka Radun / Cast Jana Plodková, Ondřej Nosálek, Milena Steinmasslová, Luděk Sobota, Jiří Vyorálek / Contact Bionaut / Distributor CinemArt, a.s.

About the director

Slobodanka Radun (b. 1971, Loznica, Yugoslavia) studied film direction at FAMU (1998). She has made a series of short documentaries for Czech Television, a video clip, several commercials, and she cowrote a film script and a story for a television series. Her debut US 2 was premiered at the end of 2014. She wrote the screenplay for the film with Czech writer Radka Denemarková, whose successful play Sleeping Disorders (2010) Radun directed at Prague’s Na zábradlí theatre.