03/07/2023 - In Tomáš Klein's directorial debut, a dystopian, post-apocalyptic vision of the Czech Republic sets the stage for an exploration of sensitivity, morality and family ties

In his feature-length fiction debut as a solo director, A Sensitive Person [+see also:
trailer
interview: Tomáš Klein
film profile], Tomáš Klein introduces the eccentric Father (David Prachař), a motormouth and wandering actor, who returns from abroad with his wife, Mother (Tatiana Dyková), and two sons to settle down in the Czech Republic and lead "a normal family life". Klein, who first attracted attention with his graduate short film Retriever and by completing Czech New Wave director Jan Němec's final film, The Wolf from Royal Vineyard Street [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Tomáš Klein
film profile], adapts Jáchym Topol's darkly humorous, bleak and bizarre novel of the same name for the big screen. This was no small undertaking, given the original winding literary journey. Klein, in collaboration with script co-writers Lucie Vaňková and Kateřina Traburová, condenses the core narrative about the rite of passage of the mute son, Elias (Jaroslav Cuhra), in a world whose order is tumbling down. A Sensitive Person, which has screened in competition at Karlovy Vary, thus emerges as a coming-of-age road movie about maintaining sensitivity in a progressively cynical and morally declining world.

The film begins with an unconventional homecoming. Father returns with his ailing wife and sons to a ramshackle estate in a camper van. Their attempt to squat in his father's flat, with its dying owner still resident, takes a surreal turn. With Mother falling unconscious and being whisked away to the hospital by Father, Elias and his baby brother spend a night concealed near the dying man. When Father returns in the morning, he discovers self-proclaimed police and social services on the scene, and following an unfortunate mishap, Father and his two sons are forced to flee again.

Klein adopts the perspective of the mute 12-year-old Elias, who, amidst Father's chaotic antics on their journey to visit Mother, remains a passive observer. Their frenzied dash to the hospital transforms into a carnivalesque odyssey through some post-apocalyptic countryside along the banks of the Sázava River, in a Czech rendition of the wasteland from Mad Max, with a distinct Eastern European touch. The trio encounters a coterie of odd characters – such as junkyard Mafiosi, hermits, prostitutes and bikers – during their travels. Central to the narrative is Elias's complex relationship with his dad, a man far from embodying the ideal paternal figure, who has relinquished all ideals to adapt to a harsh world dictated by the notion of “survival of the fittest”.

A Sensitive Person is characterised by desolate aesthetics, where death, decay and scrap dominate the post-apocalyptic landscape. The subjective viewpoint of the son is realised through Dušan Husár's (Arvéd, Domestique [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Adam Sedlák
film profile]) restless camerawork and Vadim Usoltsev's (Gen A: Do What You Love) editing, which accentuates the frantic pace and seamlessly blends scenes of stylised realism with the son's imagination, pushing the film into the territory of a melancholic fever dream. In a similar vein to his previous work The Wolf from Royal Vineyard Street, Klein employs a dash of the guerrilla style that meshes with lo-fi surrealism and results in a Felliniesque punk dystopia with a pronounced Eastern European bent.

Klein's directorial debut serves as a radical allegory, depicting the youngest generation's navigation of a world and a society crumbling amidst the wreckage of old ideals and moralities, while the family drama skilfully steers clear of sentimentality without succumbing to utter hopelessness and nihilism.

A Sensitive Person was produced by MasterFilm (Czech Republic) and Punkchart Films (Slovakia), and was co-produced by Czech Television. The theatrical release in the Czech Republic will be handled by CinemArt on 5 October.