The Sun in a Net

Štefan Uher's 1962 Slovak film is taken as the beginning of the Czechoslovak new wave. The relationship between Fajolo, a secondary school student in Bratislava, and his girlfriend Bela comes apart over a summer spent in different places; he is at an agricultural camp, she stays in the city. What the film does is abandon the heroic template of socialist realism: the young are not ideological but occupied with their own concerns, and nobody behaves as an example. The regime objected, but a critics' award allowed it into cinemas. Its visual language is poetic, and the eclipse sequence is its signature. The narrative is loose and the plot thin. Who it's for: viewers interested in Eastern European cinema and new wave movements. Who it's not for: anyone wanting incident, or who will find poetic storytelling excessive.