Zelary

By PETER CALDER

(Herald rating: * * * )

The domestic drama set against the background of World War II is a crowded genre and if this Czech film, nominated for the foreign film Oscar won by The Barbarian Invasions, doesn't do much new, it is nevertheless an accomplished and engrossing piece of work.

The director is known mainly as a prolific producer - he was behind Jan Hrebejk's marvellous Divided We Fall a couple of festivals back. But where that film gave a twist of bracing originality to a story of a Jew hiding from the Nazis, Zelary takes a much more conventional approach to a wartime drama.

Eliska (Geislerova), a medical student in Prague until the occupying Nazis closed the universities, works for the Resistance. But when an underground colleague (who is also her lover) is arrested, she flees to a small mountain village under the protection of Joza (Cserhalmi), a rough-handed and gentle-hearted timber miller.

Her arrival, needless to say, divides the community. They stage a wedding as a cover-up, but no one believes the yokel has genuinely snared the slick city girl. Some villagers are simply suspicious of Eliska (who is now called Hana); others have darker thoughts in mind.

It's not hard to predict how things will unfold in the story which spans the two years from the spring of 1943 to the summer of 1945, but the film maintains interest by the patient and subtle performances in the main roles and director Trojan's leisurely pace. The ebb and flow of the seasons in the picturesque setting of the mountains of Moravia makes for a very watchable film.

CAST: Ana Geislerova, Gyorgy Cserhalmi

DIRECTOR: Ondrej Trojan

RATING: M (violence and offensive language)

RUNNING TIME: 150 mins

SCREENING: Bridgeway