His speech was rather like his film. What he said wasn't particularly original, and after a while I was just waiting for the end.

The recent Czech film scene is quite full of films of Duše jako kaviár's genre. The 'mosaic' structure, tales of many characters' lives, interweaving and resolving together -- these are quite in fashion at the moment. But as many as there are, I quite enjoy them. Generally they show a sensitivity for character development and a subtlety of drawing, and the problem of relations between people is something quite universal . This film, however, I did not like. Duše jako kaviár is about relationships between men and women. It opens with a biblical quotation from the gospel of Luke, telling how mothers shall fight with daughters and fathers and sons shall hate each other and everyone will basically be hostile to everyone else at some point. Cieslar seems to be attempting to show the eternal nature of these problems -- men and women will always be like this. Though, his use of scripture does feel inappropriate, and like an attempt to raise the tone of a film that is somewhat unconvincing.

All of Cieslar's characters are quite unsatisfying. They don't really seem to have an original thought between them, and their portrayal shows a simple lack of imagination. They are mostly reproductions of old cliches -- the empty womanising husband, the needlessly nasty step-father, the angst-filled teenager, the gormless loser of a husband running after his unsympathetic wife, buying her gifts, etc. Everything that happens to them is utterly predictable. Anna, the teenager, for example, for the first time gets some attention from a boy, but he just seduces her and then ignores her. So, she throws herself into the Vltava. Our sympathy for her doesn't extend far enough to care about this, because it's just so familiar and cliched.

None of the motivations are particularly explained, apart from by stereotype. Why does Jan sleep around so much? The only explanation that might be there is that he is simply a man, and men do that. Not terribly convincing. And besides, not all the men in the film are like that, so Cieslar doesn't even support his own suggestion. The cliches in the film are the consequence and the cause of not fully developing characters.

Inevitably, the film has been compared to Juraj Jakubisko's film Post Coitum of the same year. This film is also about relations between people, love and sex. And indeed, you could say that his characters do fit somewhat into stereotypes -- the heartless businessman, the blonde angel of a nurse, the drugged up rockstar, the aging hippy... But Jakubisko's film is intended to be highly stylised. It is playful and self-aware. In Duše jako kaviár the characters are meant to be normal -- in which it fails spectacularly.

Well, the events and the characters are predictable in the film. And sadly, it is not even saved by interesting visual techniques or original humour. The jokes are highly childish and always expected. At the father's funeral at the beginning of the film, his daughter looks around at the mourners. The camera slowly pans over rows and rows of women. A mobile rings and they all delve into their handbags. How many other places have I seen such a scene? What is the point in reusing these old jokes? Cieslar doesn't say anything interesting with them. And add to this, a stoned dog. What base slapstick -- an animal on drugs. I cringed.

Near the beginning of the film, loyal wife Jana receives a phone call from her husband's credit card company. The woman on the other end of the phone tells her firstly that her husband's card is 'deeply in the red' (hello? Isn't that the point of credit?) and secondly that the card has been used in Paris, "mostly on purchase of women's clothes". Not only does Cieslar apparently not understand the concept of a credit card, or basic security procedures, lack of credibility in general does not seem to be a problem for him. This credit card incident is a small detail - but it is just an indication of the lack of deep thought that went into the making of this film.