Pusinky (2007) User Reviews

Czech coming of age/road trip movie

[aoc777 · 7/10 · 11 August 2012]

Pusinky aka Dolls is a Czech coming of age/road trip movie following the 3 friends Iska, Karolina and Vendula. School is finished; deadbeat jobs wait for Karolina and Vendula and college with lots of strange people and pressure by the family (no freedom to choose subject etc.) for Iska. Going away to Holland appears as the solution, aiming for the land of opportunity – away from the family, easy living, freedom, drugs, money – a chance to stay together even it is only for a while.

The story sets out as college girl is vegetating in a sports camp – send there by her parents with her little brother (who is actually good at sports) to watch her. Her two friends arrive to rescue her and with all the best intentions of taking her away from there...

So what is new, why should you watch it?

Well, this is a very Czech and European movie, so the mood is can be pretty downbeat and slow moving at times. This makes it believable and gives the actors room to develop the characters and the story room to build up secrets and tensions between the three characters, which make the movie more interesting.

So the acting is excellent and the story has lots to offer, if you are OK with things being sad and taking their time. Oh and the soundtrack fits the movie quite well.

Which brings me to the 'but' – the story is about teenagers with loads of awkwardness, mood jumps and opportunities wasted. This is annoying at times and makes you think: How can they be this stupid? Well they are teenagers… this is part of growing up, making mistakes. Still, even realizing this it is not easy to watch some parts of the movie.

Then there is the feeling that the movie has nothing really new to offer – maybe I have just watched too many movies. Maybe I have missed something as I watched the movie with subtitles.

So overall, I enjoyed the acting, most of the story and was annoyed by the teenage characters. Would I watch it once? Yes. Would I watch it again? Probably not. 6 to 7 out of 10.

Teenage Psychological Maturation

[drcernovsky · 10/10 · 2 May 2013]

A group of adolescent girls accompanied by a young brother of one of them hitch-hike in an adventurous quest in summer weather through the Czech landscape, originally intending to travel to Holland, though the intended destination is irrelevant to the plot of this film and their related efforts seem somewhat half-hearted. The trip is a part of their psychological maturation. The main merit of this movie is in its psychologically unusually accurate and emotionally moving portrait of the intra-psychic teenage turmoil. The director Karin Babinská is a master in this respect and the performance of the actors favorably compares to the majority of Hollywood films. The key protagonist (played by Marie Dolezalová) unsuccessfully attempts to overcome or firmly suppress her intense erotic attraction to women. In the first part of the film, she vehemently denies her orientation when queried in this respect by a more experienced, more mature, and overtly lesbian lady. She experiences intense frustrations in her intra-psychic struggle, even attempts suicide, but remains kind to her friends even when these contemplate rejecting her after detecting her erotic preference. These other girls in her group also struggle with growing up pains and with adolescent impulsiveness and self-doubts. The film excellently reflects their adolescent search for a fulfilling friendship and for a more satisfactory definition of one-self. The film culminates when the protagonist (Marie Dolezalová) finally again encounters and befriends the more mature and overtly lesbian lady: this meeting helps her to develop a stronger self-acceptance.