As baby boomers enter their “golden age,” the questions posed in Jan Sverak’s heartwarming new comedy become even more compelling: Are you “done” once you retire? You love your spouse, but why doesn’t she seem to love you anymore? Is she jealous of how other women look at you in your spandex biking shorts? All of these questions, and many more, get asked in this delightful film. Empties is charming, funny, bittersweet, funny, romantic and ultimately, you guessed it, very funny.
Josef (Zdenek Sverak) is a high-school literature professor who, realizing one day that he no longer understands his pupils, promptly quits teaching. This comes as a shock to Eliska (Daniela Kolarova), his wife of thirty years, who now has her cranky and peevish mate underfoot all day. But Josef decides he still has a lot to contribute to society and should find another job. None of his attempted occupations work out – least of all his turn as Prague’s only sixty-eight-year-old bike courier – until he takes a part-time position at the bottle-return counter of the local supermarket.
Through his time at the supermarket, Josef recognizes that what he has to teach people need not come from books; he thus resolves to become a student of life. Josef has always been a meddler, however, and soon his genteel involvement in other people’s lives leads to complications requiring dramatic solutions.
Empties brings back the father-and-son creative team that made the 1996 Academy Award-winning film Kolya, and they are in top form here.
Few things in life are as challenging as marriage and retirement. When these subjects are explored by a masterful director who casts his father – also the screenwriter – in the lead, you should expect a comedy of substance. With Empties you get precisely that.
Jane Schoettle