A chaotic, high-energy sex comedy takes a massive left turn with the invocation of an HIV-positive test result in Tainted Horseplay (Kopytem sem, kopytem tam), director Věra Chytilová‘s 1988 classic that premiered in a sparkling new restoration at this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and is now playing in Prague cinemas (including English-subtitled showings at Kino Atlas and Kino Světozor). Borrowing the premise of American sex comedies popularized by films like Porky’s, Chytilová gleefully dismantles the genre from within, transforming broad farce into an unsettling moral reckoning without sacrificing the manic energy that makes the first half so exhilarating.
The restoration’s Karlovy Vary premiere carried an added layer of significance. Tainted Horseplay was shot throughout the Czech spa city, but presents a vision of Karlovy Vary far removed from glamorous postcard images. Introduced by surviving cast and crew members at Hotel Thermal, producer Jaroslav Bouček even recalled nearly burning down the Grandhotel Pupp during filming. Watching the newly restored film today, its portrait of the city at the end of the communist era feels as revelatory as the restoration itself.
Tainted Horseplay follows three thirtysomething friends—Pepe (Tomáš Hanák), veterinarian Milan (Milan Šteindler), and cultural center manager František (David Vávra)—whose carefree lives revolve around drinking, practical jokes, casual affairs, and an endless pursuit of women. Socially comfortable and emotionally immature, they drift through late socialist Czechoslovakia with little concern beyond the next conquest.
During the film’s manic first half, they chase after women including Pepe’s live-in girlfriend Jiřina (Tereza Kučerová), Milan’s assistant Hanka (Renata Beccerová), František’s colleague Jana (Barbora Dlouhá), a young skier they abduct from the slopes (Ivana Kuntová), and a foreign film star played by Chantal Poullain, and generally cause chaos throughout the streets and establishments of Karlovy Vary.
But after Pepe suddenly falls ill and an anonymous AIDS test reveals that one member of their circle is HIV positive, their easy camaraderie rapidly dissolves into paranoia, suspicion, and fear as every sexual encounter suddenly takes on terrifying new significance.
The brilliance of Tainted Horseplay lies in the confidence with which Chytilová weaponizes audience expectations. For more than half of the running time, the film appears to be a distinctly Czech answer to the American sex comedy boom of the 1980s, complete with elaborate practical jokes, relentless womanizing, and broad physical comedy. Then the diagnosis arrives, and the film abruptly becomes something else entirely. What initially seemed like harmless libertinism is exposed as moral irresponsibility, with the specter of AIDS forcing every character to confront not only their sexual history but the emptiness underpinning their lives.
The tonal shift is striking, yet entirely consistent with Chytilová’s career-long fascination with exposing the contradictions of Czech society. Like Daisies, the film uses anarchic comedy to dissect social norms before revealing a darker moral framework beneath the chaos; it also approaches the psychological horror of her previous film, Wolf’s Hole, which amusingly appears playing on a television during one scene.
Chytilová would further probe this kind of contrast The Inheritance, a satirical social portrait interested in characters suddenly confronted by the consequences of their own moral complacency. Rather than repeating herself, Chytilová continually reinvented familiar genres to reflect the anxieties of contemporary Czech society. Tainted Horseplay would release the year before the country escaped communist rule during the Velvet Revolution; the looming threat of AIDS can also be read as a metaphor for the anxieties surrounding outside influences encroaching on late communist Czechoslovakia.
The ensemble cast is engaging throughout. Hanák gives Pepe enough charisma to make his eventual collapse genuinely tragic, while Šteindler and Vávra also offer memorably colorful turns. Members of Prague’s legendary Sklep Theatre, they bring their trademark absurdist energy to the material without overwhelming its emotional core; KVIFF honcho Jiří Bartoška also appears in a memorable cameo.
Jaroslav Brabec’s cinematography keeps viewers off balance through Dutch angles, unusually wide compositions, and striking use of empty space, while bursts of deep, saturated colors occasionally make the film resemble a horror movie more than a comedy.
The film’s vision of Karlovy Vary is especially interesting. Rather than highlighting elegant colonnades and luxury hotels as symbols of an international spa destination, the city becomes an ordinary residential community filled with apartment blocks, bars, hospitals, and snowy streets. Filmed during winter, it offers a darker counterpoint to the bright summer image associated with the film festival today.
Nearly four decades later, Tainted Horseplay feels startlingly modern in its willingness to tackle moral responsibility without reducing its characters to simple heroes or villains. Chytilová’s critique extends beyond late communist bureaucracy to target an entire generation drifting through life in search of pleasure while avoiding genuine responsibility.
The new restoration only reinforces the film’s enduring power. What begins as an energetic, often hilarious ensemble comedy evolves into one of the sharpest moral dramas of 1980s Czechoslovakia, all while retaining Chytilová’s unmistakable sense of visual playfulness. Like the best of her work, Tainted Horseplay refuses easy answers, instead leaving audiences with an uneasy reminder that comedy and tragedy often occupy exactly the same space.
