Decibely lásky

Miloslav Halík's directorial debut and most likely also his final performance found its way to me on a day when I was inclined toward such a cleansing experience. Any other time, I would have knocked his narrative methods down a level, but this time, I found myself reluctantly laughing at Pavel Horváth's performance, a few of the actors seemed almost decent, and most importantly – I couldn't just toss aside any film that unexpectedly features the unrelated song "Mandy" in the main dance scene. On the other hand, objectively speaking, it totally would have deserved it. The narrative structure is chosen in such a way that the viewer can almost guess where the relationships between the characters are going through to the very end, and getting the right theory about whether or not someone is someone else's offspring rivaled the joy of guessing the murderer in the cleverest detective story. One optimistic star remains, at least until I start dissecting the script's view of female characters as mere trophies, means of revenge, or instruments of atonement. (02.11.2021)

Although I can't stand the first Discostory, I have quite a soft spot for the second one (in the context of the perverse films of the first half of the 90s). That's why I didn't immediately hate Decibels of Love. Various strange throwbacks to once-popular films in the style of The Great Thaw can be pretty decent stuff for the hardened viewer. But here we encounter a film that would have loved to have been Discostory 3, but it wasn't. (10.01.2022)

I won't give it a complete thumbs down because I liked the music in it, as I just have a soft spot for Michal David. Otherwise, it's a mess. Thanks to films like these, I'm starting to feel like Czech films are impossible. Not all of them, but here, everything is completely wrong. Primarily, it shows that the creators didn't handle the narrative structure, and throughout the entire film, they don't really say anything about the plot at all. (06.10.2016)