At this point, “After Party” may be overused as a title, but it is shrewdly deployed in Vojtěch Strakatý’s crafty coming-of-age drama when the full meaning of it only comes into focus as Jindriska (Eliška Bašusová) emerges from a hangover and it isn’t only the evening before it’s referring to. Jindriska and her friend Kaja (Anna Tomanová) know what to expect from soirees that go into the wee hours of the night, seemingly unconcerned with the effects overindulging might have on their digestive tracts when throwing up in the morning doesn’t prevent them from repeating the process all over again, trying to soak up as much time together in the summer before college beckons. However, what Jindriska couldn’t possibly know is that her life so far has been a bit of a spectacle in general when she wakes up with not only a headache at the start of one particularly brutal 24-hour stretch for the teen, but the discovery that nearly everything in the house she lives in with her parents is being repossessed as authorities come in to prepare the place itself for auction.
Viewers are bound to have more fun than Jindriska does as she learns just how deep in debt her father (Jan Zadražil) is, a number she can never entirely get a handle on. Her mother, who insists that the family will be fine as her computer is hauled out of the house, isn’t of much help, amused that the repossession crew missed a 30,000Kč lamp in the kitchen when they were lugging out a painting Jindriska did when she around preschool age, and a trip to her aunt’s reveals that Dad wasn’t shy about asking family members for money, owing them close to one million koruna. The only person she can really count on is Kaja, who isn’t thrilled to have her plans of sleeping in until at least noon disrupted when Jindriska decides to keep what few things the family has left, including a couch and a handful of knickknacks, and needs her truck to move them into storage.
However, more things come out than can ever be put away in “After Party,” particularly when Jindriska’s father comes out of the woodwork less to calm her nerves than to try and get a little more cash for a real estate deal he’s working on. There’s nothing overtly funny about how Strakatý portrays the unfolding catastrophe when potential creditors include a thuggish pair that start stalking Jindriska, but whereas there’s both an urgency and sly story mechanics that might suggest a Dardenne-style slice of social realism, the film has a pleasingly light touch as the young woman debates trusting her father as she had for all the years leading up to the day or trusting pretty much everyone around her that he’s been a con man. Although the film ends before you can see whether Jindriska decides if she’s going off to school in the fall or will even be able to afford to given its tight day-long timeline, you see her get an education with Bašusová expressing a real ambivalence in a nuanced turn that allows for the revelation of trusting herself even when she loses it in others. She won’t be alone in having a hangover from Strakatý’s delicious debut feature, but for audiences, it’s only the good kind.
“After Party” will screen again at the Venice Film Festival on September 4th at 9 am at the Sala Giardino.