Kwietne pączki

Hopelessness deepened with extraordinary sadism (where Sláma pokes around). Thanks to Vladimír Smutný’s cinematography, the ruination shrouding Flower Buds has an almost apocalyptic quality in places (the scene with the headless angel). There is nothing good and everything can only get worse, which is also true for the characters, with whom it isn’t really possible to sympathise. The protagonists are frozen in time. They are unable to move forward and, at the same time, they are unable to critically assess the past. The women behave like whores, the men like idiots and representative of both genders make decisions that essentially hurt not only themselves, but also others. The only more consistently well-thought-out theme is the exceedingly general misery of existence. However, the film does address the issue of immigration, which has not yet been seriously reflected in Czech cinema, or rather the topic of reducing a person to the level of a monetizable object (which in the case of the striptease scenes is prevented by the uncritical shooting of the female body). Though I find it difficult to understand deriving pleasure from pain, both physical and mental and inflicted by strikingly artificial means (the unbelievable storyline with Zuzana), I admire the film’s unwavering bleakness. There is no sign of consolation, hope or a thoroughly positive character. The absence of positive values takes on such colossal dimensions that only helpless laughter remains. There is no alternative reaction to the Christmas Eve scene, the cruellest denial of the imperative that everything must be nice at Christmas that I have ever seen in a film. I realised that the film’s creators probably wanted to lead us to this “contrary” reaction, which is inappropriate with respect to the characters’ situation, during the final minutes, when the period of normalisation is recalled with a joyless song by Michal David and fireworks in the background, while it is in reality still present like dirt under the fingernails (rather than a particular system, the film criticises the mentality of the people – the buck-passing  reference to the communist past as the cause of the way “things” are today, though none of the characters explicitly express themselves in this sense). The implicit identification of the cause of “our” current unhappiness, which a lot of people find easier to just live with instead of doing something about it, gives Flower Buds a new dimension and elevates it beyond mere observation of others’ suffering.  No indulgence, no compassion, but still some kind of message.  Really? To be sure, I have to watch the film again.  70% (07.12.2011)

I don't know why social drama should be something between the book of Job and the Revelation of St. John in ungodly industrial scenery... Paradoxically, he does not look at the fates of the heroes of Flower Buds any more tragically when, instead of a perceptive inner characteristic, the creator imposes more and more hardships on them, lets them vegetate in a disgusting world without hope and reduces their relationships to more or less negative social interactions. Rather than an authentic social statement about the crisis and the fringe, we have a magnificent theater of ruin and despair which, instead of catharsis, contains a refined screenwriting twist - but if it thought about in terms of consequence, it says nothing about the characters, the world or (almost absent) moral values. Neither the work of the raw qualities of Fish Tank was created, nor the stylized image of the "rough subtlety" of the fate of the dimensions of Adam's Apples, nor the convincingly escalated social statement of everyday hope in despair as in Bliss... a narrative and relatively cultivated film was created, which is harmed by the mannerist effort to impress and depict the world in the grayest possible colors. Paradoxically, the shades that turn the construct into a living tissue disappear. Flower Buds stuck to the Spartakiad surface of fundamental ills and perverted social rituals, rather than offer a detailed analysis of what is so fatal in life in "neo-normalization". But even during those few successful scenes and solid acting, it must be evaluated as above-average for the Czech Republic and Jiráský must be credited to the innumerable list of Czech hopes. (15.12.2011)

Flower Buds is far from perfect, roughly as much as the Czech Republic is from the standard of living in Luxembourg. There are many things to criticize the film for, but above all, it is the lack of script development or rather overcomplication. On the other hand, it is a sympathetic film that I enjoy watching, especially since this genre is rare here, and Jiráský entered the domain where only Bohdan Sláma had previously operated. By the way, with the honorable exception of Country Teacher, I have a worse attitude toward Bohdan Sláma's films than towards Jiráský's. Despite some missteps, Jiráský seems overall more convincing to me. To his credit, I can mention the casting, work with the actors and camera, and above all, the choice of settings. Jiráský belongs to the handful of Czech directors who can evoke an atmosphere using music, visuals, and lighting, and in this case, the atmosphere of desolation and hopelessness. Jiráský - and I find this sympathetic as well - does not look at his antiheroes with any naivety, as they are characters who are actively working during their time in the basement in one way or another. Last but not least, I find this film sympathetic because it portrays members of the Vietnamese minority, as this, like many other things, is not cultivated in the Czech film industry. Overall impression: 75%. (16.03.2014)

The aesthetics of Flower Buds may be somewhat attractive and different. Yet the situations outlined here say nothing, go nowhere. Finally, even the film about the film said that it was just a fairy tale for adults and that's how we should approach it. The debuting director Javorský and the Polish actress Pikus do not form a team I would like to return to. However, certain aspects can be traced elsewhere - the Vietnamese community in Miss Hanoi, the ugly depressing small towns currently shown in every other series... or overall, thematically, something can be traced in certain wholes, but individually it's no pleasure. (29.03.2020)