Petr Meissel Movies
Television director Andy Cadiff turns toward feature films to direct the romantic comedy Chasing Liberty, which appears to be loosely based on the 1953 Audrey Hepburn classic Roman Holiday. Mandy Moore stars as Anna Foster, the 18-year-old daughter of President of the United States James Foster (Mark Harmon). Anna has led quite a privileged life, but she has grown to resist the constant presence of Secret Service agents getting in the way of her independence. While on a family trip to Europe, Anna manages to get away from security for a brief time. She inevitably falls into the romantic arms of British boy Ben Calder (Matthew Goode), with whom she enjoys a fresh and clean European vacation. Not wanting to ruin her fun, she doesn't tell him about her upper-class social status. But, alas, Ben surprises her with a secret identity of his own. Jeremy Piven and Annabella Sciorra play two Secret Service agents. Caroline Goodall plays the wise, conventional First Lady. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi
- Starring:
- Mandy Moore, Matthew Goode, (more)
Czech animator Jan Svankmajer gained acclaim and notoriety for his eerie, nightmarish stop-motion animated pieces fashioned out of discarded dolls, battered marionettes, and pieces of junk. His films such as Alice and Faust delved headlong into the subconscious and dredged up images that were imbued not only with a woozy sense of dread but with a savage sense of wit. Svankmajer's third feature -- and his first (mostly) live-action film -- is an absurdist look at some very weird sexual adventurers. Peony (Petr Meissel) is a nebbish bachelor with a passion for porno mags and poultry. At the film's outset, he pulls a live chicken from his wardrobe and has his neighbor, Mrs. Loubalova (Gabriela Wilhelmova), cut its throat -- which she does with a fair amount of relish and glee. Using the head as a model, he fashions a papier-mâché chicken mask -- made from old pornography -- and an accompanying chicken suit. Later, in a bizarre backwater ritual, Peony dons his chicken costume and taunts and crushes an effigy of his neighbor. Mrs. Loubalova apparently harbors similar bloodthirsty fantasies for Peony -- in a similarly weird ritual, set in an abandoned church, she whips and then drowns a straw effigy of her fellow apartment tenant. Surrounding this unlikely romance of sorts are the onanistic obsessions of another quartet of very kinky characters. Mrs. Malkova (Barbora Hrzanova), the neighborhood postwoman, has a penchant for balling up pieces of bread for unlikely purposes. Kula (Jiri Labus), the guy who sells Peony his nudie mags, has created an elaborate autoerotic device connected to his TV, complete with robot controls and rubber hands, designed to, um, augment his enjoyment of the news -- especially when read by Mrs. Beltinska (Anna Wetlinska). Mrs. Beltinska, in turn, reaches the height of on-the-air bliss by having her toes sucked by a pair of carp hidden beneath her desk. And finally her husband, a police inspector, is much more interested in scrubbing his naked self with rollers spiked with nails or funnels filled with fur than in fulfilling his marital duties. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi
- Starring:
- Petr Meissel
