Love between the Raindrops

Novelist Jan Otčenášek co-wrote the screenplay of Lásky mezi kapkami deště (Love between the Raindrops), a romantic story with autobiographical elements filmed in 1979 by the respected director Karel Kachyňa. The protagonist of a narrative set in the 1930s is Karel “Kajda” Bursík, whose childhood and teens are spent in Prague’s Žižkov district. His family face all kinds of pressures: his mother dies and his shoe-making father vainly pours his energies into trying to compete with industry leader Baťa. The gifted Kajda tries to escape the fate society has mapped out for him and, by contrast with his labourer older brother Pepan, attends grammar school. However, war is on the horizon – and the character’s first romance with the delicate Pája is accompanied by disillusionment… In his film Kachyňa successfully alternates comic and tragic elements as Kajda’s affair of the heart comes into conflict with his brother’s down-to-earth approach. Divided into six “movements”, the narrative sketches, in a mildly poetic haze, a tough coming of age in a tough period. Its makers evidently borrowed the formal structure (in which individual cabaret numbers reflect the changing social mood) of Bob Fosse’s musical Cabaret (1972). Kachyňa’s favourite cinematographer Jan Čuřík gave the picture an engaging look that balanced the dazzling retro atmosphere with the harsh social context. A number of bizarre small roles performed by leading actors (incl. Rudolf Hrušínský as a voyeuristic pharmacist and Miroslav Macháček as his friend Ráb) help evoke the vanished world of the old working class district. Lukáš Vaculík, then 17, made his screen debut as Kajda, while the seasoned Vladimír Menšík took the role of his father, the luckless cobbler Bursík. Pája was played by Tereza Pokorná in an early appearance. Michal Dlouhý portrayed the young Kajda and Eduard Cupák is the narrator as the now adult protagonist looks back on his younger days.