Little Otik

For sheer perversity, Jan Svankmajer's CONSPIRATORS OF PLEASURE is a tough act to follow. But the renowned animator did it with this wickedly funny, deeply disturbing, live-action retelling of an old Czech folktale. Bozena Horakova (Veronika Zilková) is depressed. She and her husband Karel Horak (Jan Hartl) have been desperately trying to have a baby, but to no avail. One weekend at their country house, Karel tries to cheer up his wife with a little joke: He takes the knotty stump of a dead tree he's uprooted from their garden, trims its roots to form arms and legs, slaps on a coat of varnish and offers it to Bozena. Bozena is ecstatic. Believing it to be a real baby...