2 different but powerful men take a woman into the woods and rape her. She, feigning amnesia after they knocked her out, invites them to her home for a drink. They agree and she drugs them and then use her veterinary skills to castrate them both. This all takes place in the first half hour, with the rest of the film looking at the impact upon each of them, both dramatically and comedically
This is an often strange mixture of comedy and drama which for the most part works well enough. For example whilst the rape is portrayed very seriously, the short term aftermath of their castration is quite funny, demonstrating the directors skill in merging these unlikely tones together. The difficulty thereafter though is that director Vera Chytilová is determined to pass along quite a few different messages here including about the post communist world in Czechoslovakia run like a boys club and men in general who are pretty much all presented as unpleasant and largely stupid, with woman mostly giggling sex maniacs or grumpy cliched wives. That's fine I suppose but it all ends up in an unsatisfactory, confusing and badly edited climax which for me spoiled the overall film which tries too hard to fit too much in.
This is an often strange mixture of comedy and drama which for the most part works well enough. For example whilst the rape is portrayed very seriously, the short term aftermath of their castration is quite funny, demonstrating the directors skill in merging these unlikely tones together. The difficulty thereafter though is that director Vera Chytilová is determined to pass along quite a few different messages here including about the post communist world in Czechoslovakia run like a boys club and men in general who are pretty much all presented as unpleasant and largely stupid, with woman mostly giggling sex maniacs or grumpy cliched wives. That's fine I suppose but it all ends up in an unsatisfactory, confusing and badly edited climax which for me spoiled the overall film which tries too hard to fit too much in.