AFI FEST Report: Wrong Side Up (Pribehy Obycejneho Silvenstvi) Review

Now working as an airport cargo worker, 40-ish Petr (Ivan Trojan) spends most of his time trying to get Jana back. With her short, jet-black hair, startling clear-eyed gaze, and long legs, Jana (Zuzana Sulajova) is easily the most attractive woman who will ever stride through Petr’s life. But Jana has moved on to the more stable Martin (Petr Lafek), leaving Petr vulnerable to the strange entreaty of his neighbors’ (Jiri Bartoska and Zuzana Bydzovska) sexual requirements.

Petr’s father David (Miroslav Krobot) is not deathly ill. Rather, he’s deathly tired of his wife (Nina Diviskova). He narrated newsreel footage for the Communists, though he has fallen on hard times in recent years. His wife is convinced that his countrymen still recognize his voice, and forces him to dial a random phone number to prove it so as to rebuild his supposedly lost confidence. The random call results in David developing a friendship with Sylvie (Petra Lustigova), an artist recovering from a romantic break-up.

These quirky comedy bits are assembled by writer/director Petr Zelenka into a tapestry that gains power from being stitched together. The entire universe that Petr and his friends, family, and neighbors inhabit is not quite real—it’s sunnier, funnier, and more gentle than it should be—yet it flies close enough to the pains and troubles of life that it remains grounded in truth.

Several sequences sound too precious to work, yet stick in the memory: Petr and David’s conversation in traffic—one in his car, the other walking on the sidewalk; David’s surreptitious phone call from a restaurant, using his own non-mobile phone; Petr and Jana’s cell-phone conversation while both are in the same apartment; and Petr’s long trek on a small cargo forklift far from the airport.

According to producer Pavel Strnad in a post-screening Q & A, Zelenka originally wrote a three-hour screenplay, cut it down for a much shorter theatrical production—which opened in the Czech Republic and did well—and then expanded it again for the film version. One other note—according to IMDB, gorgeous actress Zuzana Sulajova is Slovakian and her voice was dubbed by Zuzana Stivinova.

WRONG SIDE UP is a marvelous, comic character piece.

WRONG SIDE UP opened in the Czech Republic in February and in Poland in September. The film’s Czech-language
web site is here; you can download the trailer from here. It’s been released on DVD in the Czech Republic, but it’s not likely to have English subtitles. The film does not yet have North American distribution.