Corpus Delicti

After her successful debut, Čas sluhů (Time of the Servants), the director Irena Pavlásková immediately made another commentary on the declining moral condition of Czech society. The psychological drama Corpus Delicti became one of the first Czech films to look doubtfully at the opportunities that opened up for the country’s morally shaken and internally enslaved citizens thanks to the “Velvet Revolution” of 1989. Together with her mother, Nelly Pavlásková, the director wrote a screenplay whose protagonists are three couples. Jana, a divorced teacher, lives with the taciturn Tomáš. However, she still helps her loser husband, Kadlec, who is a journalist. He lives with Helena, a timorous clerk. The lives of both couples are turned upside-down when they meet the older, eccentric and hedonistic Viki, who is a dissident. Despite the fact that 1989 is imminent, Viki’s estranged husband Chlad, who works for the secret police, can still do a lot of damage… Irena and Nelly Pavlásková are indicating that the “microbe of evil” festered in some people under totalitarianism, and that nothing changed this – not even the political and social changes of November 1989. Irena Pavlásková makes her arguments for this assertion in an effective and energetic manner. Moreover, thanks to the F.A. Brabec’s camerawork Corpus Delicti is a visually impressive, dynamic spectacle, in which the filmmaker offered interesting opportunities to older actors (Jiřina Bohdalová excels as Viki, while Michal Dočolomanský plays the urbane villain Chlad) as well as to her younger colleagues (Lenka Kořínková as the sensitive and moral Jana, and the excellent Karel Roden as the wretched aggressor Kadlec). The former student leader Šimon Pánek appears in the role of Tomáš. It’s possible to identify many members of the crew in the smaller roles along with several “celebrities” of that time (e.g. the critic Jan Rejžek).