Adelheid

98 minutes

This 1969 chamber drama by Czech director Frantisek Vlacil serves as a parable for the tense and resentful relations between Czechs and Germans after World War II. A Czech officer (Petr Cepek) acquires an estate on the Bohemian border once occupied by a German family; its patriarch has been imprisoned for crimes against the locals, and the man's daughter (Emma Cerna) becomes servant and love interest for the new occupant. Heavy symbolism and arty compositions weigh the film down, but I was intrigued by the psychological cat and mouse between the two leads, kindred spirits separated by language and history. In Czech and German with subtitles. By Ted Shen