Expulsion from Paradise

This movie involves many hidden layers. It is basically a philosophical movie, staged at the least philosophical environment imaginable: A closed scenery of a nudist spot, where some hired Czech stuff is making a plain erotic movie for a rich Russian producer. Nothing in this movie is what it seems to be at the first superficial glance. The story is just a patsy. Naked relationships and sampled philosophies of all those people are symbolized by all those naked people themselves. It is rather a movie how to make some sense out of a nonsense. About boundaries, differences and similarities between reality and staged pseudo-reality. Everything culminates in last climactic scenes, when neither directors nor actors and viewers are sure if the death is real or just a part of the movie plot. A key to the whole story is perhaps in its very last sentence: "When I imagine that this Earth is flying in the Universe ... those people are perhaps not even realizing that..."

At present, it is a very underrated movie by Věra Chytilová, which probably will be more appreciated only after some time. It is a symbolic movie, made paradoxically by a highly non-symbolic and realistic method. It is a complicated and provoking intellectual movie, definitely not recommended to those who are seeking just some erotic stuff or plain action movie. It obviously also involves some tangible biographical and personal elements and internal fights of Boleslav Polívka (one of writers and the major protagonist) and Věra Chytilová herself.