Writers: Tereza Nvotová and Dušan Budzak
Director: Tereza Nvotová
Unbearably tense from start to end, Tereza Nvotová’s film, inspired by true events, features long shots, all carefully choreographed, adding to the high stakes of this drama that unravels inexorably. With a compelling and breathtaking lead by Milan Ondrík, Father is a study of grief and complicity.
It begins with the everyday: Ondrík’s Michal comes home from jogging as his wife Zuzka and two-year-old daughter Dominika get ready for the day. He finds a new blemish on his face as he showers and wonders if it’s skin cancer. Rather than a sign of sensible precaution, it seems like a gesture of vanity. His wife’s responses suggest that this isn’t the first time he’s queried a freckle.
Cinematographer Adam Suzin, with a handheld camera, follows the family as they prepare for work and daycare. A new plan emerges; Zuzka has an important work meeting, and so can Michal take Dominika to daycare. They leave the house in a rush, and it’s hot. Newscasters on the radio and TV tell of the heatwave in their part of Slovakia and, further afield, of forest fires in California. Father and daughter sing The Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Round in the car. The sequence of events is ordinary, but there is a quiet terror within this single long take.
The camera gives Ondrík no space, honing in on his face as he drives and then as he enters the building where Michal’s regional paper has its offices, right around the corner from the nursery. His business is failing, and a new manager has arrived to cut costs and, possibly, jobs. Michal doesn’t seem to be that bothered, taking calls from his wife in the middle of a vital staff briefing. Later, in his office, he watches old holiday movies on his computer or scrolls through articles on men’s health. The A/C has failed; he’s sweating through his shirt.
And then something happens that is so shocking that even though it occurs in the first 20 minutes of the film, it would be a disservice to reveal it. However, with the tragedy exposed, the horror has only just begun. The camera remains intrusive, never allowing the father the privacy he deserves. But we still watch and judge like the journalists who turn up to his house the next day.
The long shots continue, and the changes from handheld camera to Steadicam and cranes are seamless, ensuring that the film is intimate and yet invasive at the same time. Ondrík gives Michal an aloofness that is hard to warm to, even though his anguish is authentically portrayed. As Zuzka, Dominika Morávková is brittle but loyal and strong, getting on with the washing and birthday parties, keeping up a world that is otherwise broken. Life, it seems, will continue.
The end may be a little contrived, but, as with all of this film, it looks beautiful.
Father is screening at the Venice Film Festival.
