Beauty in Trouble

After her husband is jailed for stealing cars, thirtyish Marcela (Geislerová) and her two young children move in with Marcela’s mother and her delightfully sadistic boyfriend (Jirí Schmitzer). Struggling to get back on track, Marcela meets a wealthy, older man (Josef Abrhám) who promises a better life for her and her kids. At heart, Beauty in Trouble is a fairly conventional story about the conflicting pulls of sexual dependency and financial security, but the movie is lifted out of the ordinary by Schmitzer’s turn as the grandfather from hell.