Autumn Spring

(Herald rating * * * *)

A marriage made in heaven of two of the acting doyens of the Czech Republic drives this touching and very funny film, which played in the 2003 festivals.

Brodsky plays Frantisek, aka Fanda, an incorrigible 75-year-old retired actor whose response to the dying of the light is to dream up complicated practical jokes.

When we meet Fanda he is impersonating a celebrated conductor contemplating a return to his homeland from a glorious American career. His best friend Eda (Zindulka) is playing his devoted private secretary.

The pair pretend to be shopping for country mansions and enjoy the hospitality of real estate agents who buy them expensive lunches to sweeten the deal.

It's plain his pretences are conducted as much for his own enjoyment, to prove his thespian powers are not fading, as for profit, and his essential humanity will always win out over his greed.

When he accosts a complete stranger and convinces him he's an old friend, a scam is in the offing, but the scene takes a sharp turn when Fanda hears his mark's hard luck story.

Fanda conducts these ruses much to the annoyance of his wife Emilie (Zazvorkova) who deals with approaching death by grimly setting aside bits of their pension to buy a burial plot and discussing with their feckless and selfish son Jara (Vetchy) their withdrawal to a retirement home so he can take over their apartment.

When one of Fanda's deceptions catches up with him he is unabashed. He embarks on an even more outrageous one. Emilie snaps.

Brodsky and Zazvorkova, friends and colleagues for more than half a century, make a deliciously plausible couple, capturing perfectly that mixture of exasperation and indulgence that characterises marriages of great longevity. Brodsky's face - owly, jowlish and impish all at once - is a pleasure to watch, his performance rich in pathos. Zazvorkova's fussy and precise Emilie makes her the perfect "straight man" to the star's sometimes poignantly Chaplinesque style.

If the film flirts with treacly sentimentality at moments (particularly in a rather lush soundtrack), it never slips into mawkishness.

It's a heartwarming and life-affirming experience and the feeling it leaves is only slightly diluted by the knowledge that Brodsky, seriously ill and disaffected with his country's politics, took his own life shortly after the film was completed.

CAST: Vlastimil Brodsky, Stella Zazvorkova, Stanislav Zindulka, Ondrej Vetchy
DIRECTOR: Vladimir Michalek
RUNNING TIME: 97 mins
RATING: PG
SCREENING: Lido