Daisies

The most defiant film of the Czech New Wave and Věra Chytilová's best-known work. Two young women, both called Marie, decide that the world has gone bad and declare that they are therefore entitled to go bad too. After that the film abandons plot entirely: the girls have old men buy them dinner, put them on trains and leave, turn into figures that look cut from paper with scissors, the colour filters change, the cutting starts making jokes. Ester Krumbachová's contribution to the script is large; the cinematographer is Jaroslav Kučera, Chytilová's husband. The film was banned in Czechoslovakia. One of the stated grounds was not political but the waste of food. The destruction of a banquet table near the end counted as an official insult in a country that defended its food production, and Chytilová could not make films for years. Who it is for: viewers who like formal experiment, the absence of narrative and destructive humour. Who it is not for: anyone who wants a story. There is no character development, it arrives nowhere, and it spends seventy minutes deliberately scattered; irritating you is part of the plan.