Small Town

Not exactly overflowing with the milk of human kindness, this arch mock-documentary takes a fumigator not just to Czech post-communist provincial politics, but to slipstream life generally. Indeed, the funniest scene is the first, set before the Velvet Revolution, in which a visiting Communist Party dignitary is lavished with booze until he's slurring a new manifesto: 'Crotches of the world unite!' Democracy is heralded by a shot of a drunk tramp wending her way down the street, and soon the Independent Eroticists are cleaning up at the local polls, if not in office. A chronicle of petty scams, profligacy, lechery and failure, it hasn't been a favourite with the Czechs, but there's a dry affection in its eye for the grotesque. More problematic is how it eventually runs out of steam and ends up turning in circles.