Death of the Beautiful Roebucks

Set in 1930s Czechoslovakia, this is a colourful, not to say eccentric portrait of a Jewish chancer-cum-dreamer, based on Ota Pavel's autobiographical short stories. Having landed a job as a travelling Electrolux salesman (fridges and vacuum-cleaners), our hero transplants his family from country to city, refines the tricks of the trade, plays away, still brings home the bacon (woodland roe deer seem his only taboo), but pours the best part of his new wealth into a giant carp pond. He keeps balanced on the tightrope until the Nazis arrive. The film is as rambling, episodic, pointless and amoral as life itself; but, equally, as gregarious and enthused by nature as the dreamer himself.