Wrong Side Up

Based on his own stage play, Zelenka’s latest displays his characteristic brand of dark, irreverent, slightly surreal humour, but is never quite as funny or substantial as the delicious ‘Buttoners’. Petr (Trojan) used to work in an airport control tower but now contents himself toiling in the baggage department; he’s more concerned with winning back his ex, Jana (Sulajová), from her current lover, though he’s often distracted from his efforts in that respect by the eccentricities of his parents, his boss and his neighbours. There are good gags in this meditation on how we need to make proper choices in life even though the choices are often severely circumscribed; but for all its provocations, it also ends up quite conventionally romantic.