Dirty Soul

Cieslar's film Dirty Soul follows his perception of the world. In the 1990s it was a surprisingly good probe into the world of elite sport, ambition, and violence in The Taste of Death. A decade later, Happy Celluloid produces a distinctly unsuccessful probe into the world of people in broken relationships. The seemingly good idea to connect several disparate pairs and polygons by a common address and one death did not quite work. At the beginning, Josef Nedorost missed his chance to make a comeback, and the rest was just one lifeless caricature to the next. Yes, young people's relationships are naive, marital infidelities are often awkward, and ambition and caring for a family often don't see eye to eye, but in Cieslar's film, it's all just a staged mistake with unusually bad acting. Even though I tended to appreciate at least the setting of the story in the less attractive parts of Prague, it didn't really help much. (17/02/2009)

I looked in vain for traces of comedy in the film, but drama was almost ever-present (including an ordinary opening of the door). All the characters were unlikeable as hell, led by the loser portrayed by Sasha Rashilov, and I was bored for most of the one hundred minutes. In the end, I felt like the creators’ favorite destination was ‘Silicone’ Valley. Not only did they cast the trio Vilhelmová, Cibulková, Veselá, they even addressed the topic directly. I’m just not a fan of such enhancements. (01/11/2020)