It’s cloying, overstuffed, and oppressively cute, but you’d have to be a cynic to hate F.A. Brabec’s V peřině (English title: The Magical Duvet), which employs imaginative visuals, catchy tunes, florid choreography, and a star-studded cast headlined by Lucie Bílá and Karel Roden to help all the sugary sweetness go down. At the very least, this is certainly different from the average Czech feature film.
The setting is simply bizarre. In an idyllic small town (actually Písek, South Bohemia), Mom (Lucie Bílá) operates a feather-cleaning business, using a large machine to suck the nightmares out of duvets, ensuring a good night’s sleep. Dad (Karel Roden) spends his time developing feather technology, which involves testing down jackets in the freezer.
Grandfather (Bolek Polívka) was somehow, ahem, sucked into a duvet months ago, landing him in a billowy pink Doctor Parnassus-like Imaginarium that seems only slightly dissimilar to his reality.
That leaves Grandmother (Eliška Balzerová, who won a Czech Lion last year for her role in Ženy v pokušení) as the only one who knows the secret of the dream-cleaning business: all the nightmares are kept locked in the basement.
That proves troublesome upon the arrival of a fortune teller, Hilda (Nina Divísková), who opens a shop across the street and decides all the pleasant dreams aren’t so good for business.
This results in a couple nightmares escaping into reality: a tall man with a sack who kidnaps children, and a beautiful woman (Nikol Moravcová) who winds up taking care of the kids (Amélie Pokorná and Matěj Převrátil).
Then there’s a student (Jiří Mádl) who rents an attic room at the feather cleaning business, and the young girl (Anna Stropnická) hopelessly in love with him. Milan Steindler and Marek Vašut have small roles as the Grandfather’s pub friends; Tatiana Vilhelmová is the woman with the dog; Arnošt Goldflam plays a police officer/crossing guard permanently stationed outside the family business.
V peřině is also a full-fledged musical, with a number of cheerful, even catchy tunes set to a diverse musical style (Support Lesbiens, Kabát, and the late Karel Svoboda all had a hand in the soundtrack).
Some fun choreography, featuring traditionally-costumed villagers dancing in unison, is led by Dara Rollins and Lesbiens’ Kryštof Michal.
Eclectic live-action set design features a wonderful use of color; this contrasts with the sickeningly pink CGI world inside the duvet, which feels bland and ill-defined. Director Brabec previously made the excellent Kytice, a similarly bright, highly-stylized fairy tale that skewed to an older demographic.
You might call V peřině Terry Gilliam on a sugar high. It feels vaguely nostalgic, though for what, I have no idea. The Candyland visuals, syrupy tone, and overflowing innocence make this a fitting Valentine’s Day dessert. As long as you can stomach all the sweetness.
