• Hrebejk’s Honeymoon screens again tomorrow at the Gene Siskel Film Center.

I may have panned his latest, Honeymoon, in this week’s issue, but Jan Hrebejk is still my favorite working Czech filmmaker. A gifted director of actors and a perceptive chronicler of domestic life across all social strata, Hrebejk exhibits a warm (but seldom sentimental) understanding of character regardless of whether he’s working in comedy or drama. He’s also one of the most prolific figures in contemporary Czech cinema, having directed about 15 films for theaters and TV since Divided We Fall became an international success in 2000. Hrebejk’s movies can be slight (e.g., the recent sex farce 4Some) or overstated (e.g., Kawasaki’s Rose), but they almost never lack nuance or curiosity about how adults choose to lead their lives. If you haven’t seen one, I recommend starting with Divided We Fall or Up and Down, both of which are readily available on DVD.

He’s one of the few. For directors who aren’t as well-known as Allen, it’s much harder to get steady financing. Do things work differently in the Czech Republic? I don’t know much about your country’s film industry.

  • Nojin/Wikimedia Commons
  • Jan Hrebejk

Hrebejk: It’s all about the timing. When I’m cutting my new film, the scriptwriter is already working on the next one.

Hrebejk: The situation isn’t exactly the same for us in the Czech Republic. In many cases, we don’t know from the beginning how much will be spent on distribution. It’s difficult to compare the situation of European cinemas with that of American cinema—not only Hollywood, but also independent American movies. We have a production system that supports the whole movie industry, from the newspaper reviews and so on. Also movies are often coproduced by the TV stations.

Still, that doesn’t explain their strong interest in psychology and character. I was curious to know if you and your screenwriters start by coming up with the characters of a film before deciding on the story?

  • Beauty in Trouble

Hrebejk: Paradoxical ones. In Kawasaki’s Rose, for example, the main character is a dissident who once collaborated with the communist regime. In Divided We Fall, all of the characters can be described in terms of their paradoxes. Even when I’m directing comedy, I take the characters’ bipolarity into account, so there’s an element of tragedy. The main character of Up and Down, you know, is this racist soccer fan whose girlfriend adopts a black child.

  • Vasaryova (right) with Jiri Machacek in Shameless