LONERS []
Delightfully warped take on twentysomething lovers in Prague. Running time: 104 minutes. Unrated (sexual situations, profanity.) In Czech with English subtitles. At BAMcinematek, 30 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn.
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THE fairy-tale romanticism of multi-spired Prague has been well-documented in travel brochures and misty still photographs.
Poof! – just like that – Czech director David Ondricek bursts the bubble, turning a skeptical lens on the contemporary capital to create a crazy quilt of young love lives unraveling and snarling up again.
“Loners” is peopled by twentysomething ding-a-lings utterly incapable of building sincere, solid relationships – their screwy search for meaning could take place in any metropolis (and it has, in Cameron’s Crowe’s Seattle-based “Singles” and New York’s “Sex and the City.”)
The film opens with Hanka (Jitka Schneiderova) and her disc jockey boyfriend (Sasa Rasilov) – who paints his face like a samurai before going on air – deciding to split after tossing a coin.
The rapid-fire succession of hook-ups and break-ups that follow are just as heartless and rote.
Hanka, who is being ineptly stalked by a married neurosurgeon, seems to find love with a philosophizing pot-head (Jiri Machacek), only to be dumped when his bandmates remind him he already has a girlfriend.
This absurdist patchwork of a film, already a hit in the Czech Republic, features a number of amusing set pieces: A fire extinguisher fight, a roomful of Japanese tourists earnestly videotaping an “authentic” Czech family meal, and a botched attempt by the neurosurgeon to set his crush and her lover on fire.
“This is warped,” says the stoner savant, as flames flutter up his arms. Rather delightfully so.