F. A. Brabec’s Kytice, called also in the U.S. Wildflowers (although the Czech title actually translates as The Garland or The Bouquet) comprises seven of the original twelve dark fairy tales included in the 1853 book by Karel Jaromír Erben. Given the date of Erben’s book (which I’ve never read—until the film, never heard of), I was pleased to find that the material is very Victorian, very Christina Rossetti “Goblin Market”-y. But I didn’t really care for the film.
Subscribers to the IMDb call the film “visually beautiful.” I would call it, rather, “pretty.” All in all, the color cinematography, by Brabec himself, is rather too soft and luminous for the dark tales. A better fit, perhaps, would have been Newton Thomas Sigel’s cinematography for Terry Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm (2005).
Another thing: two or three of the stories are exceptionally hard to follow.
One thing more: ridiculously, some compare this film to Akira Kurosawa and Ishirô Honda’s Dreams (1990). Actually, Brabec’s film struck me as being closer to Bergman than to Kurosawa, but religious/superstitious rather than skeptical. Lots of lovely pictures, a boy connecting the tales on a haunting penny whistle, and a cache of cruelty, some of it a bit misogynistic.
Lots of camera tricks and staging tricks: time-lapsed skies, eerily lovely slow motion (such as of a girl falling into the sea), people flying, etc.
Dennis Grunes 