Did you people see the same film I saw?

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

I saw this last year in a beautiful theater downtown where one sits in an easy chair and has a beer. I went with two friends. We went reluctantly, more for the chairs and beer than for any high cinematic experience; picking this movie out of a handful that were playing at the time. I think we were really lucky to see it. I wept a few times, with sadness in the middle, with joy towards the end. Very subtly told, beautifully shot. I really loved it. All the roles were well acted. The final scene was magical. One of a dozen movies that have ever moved me in this way. I'm very appreciative to the filmmakers. Thank you. And since I need a few more words for the ten lines.

This is a Czech film,seemingly taking place in suburban Prague. I say seemingly as this rural area seems it is in another century.This in itself would be a minor point if all else was at least half way good.The film is exceedingly & excessively boring,with a cast of uninteresting people. There is not one person in the cast that I cared for, or even would want to associate with for more than a few minutes.I normally like films with some Gay characters. By the time we have the attempted seduction scene, I was already turned off by the poor acting & production values, and could have cared less. The remaining 20 or so minutes went further down hill.The running time was a very long 115 minutes. This is really a bad boring film in every way possible.Ratings: * (out of 4) 22 points (out of 100) IMDb 1 (out of 10)

Although early on, an attentive viewer can guess at the ending (or a good portion of the ending), the film never loses its power. There are five strong characters in this film, and the relationships between them are wonderfully complex, as only a non-American film can portray. There are no simple answers here; life is complicated, even in a Czech farming village. By the time the film ends, we know exactly what it would be like to live in this place, what we would do for work and fun, who our friends would be, what the future would hold for us. Although much of this view is filtered through the main character, the teacher, his non- judgmental approach allows us to appreciate how things are in a world different from ours. From the outset, the teacher clearly has secrets; this, oddly, does not drive the plot as much as the question of how he will integrate into an environment different from the world of Prague and elite schools that this son of a woman science professor used to inhabit. This film, sans car chases, sans bombs, sans gratuitous anything, is mesmerizing.

This film is hugely flawed in 2 respects. 1. The portrayal of gays here is essentially a cinematic echo of the 1950s message that gay people portrayed in cinema are inwardly tortured, victims, tragic, predatory, paedophile and troublemakers. Also that when the drama of their homosexuality is finally revealed it is the cause of a terrible terrible thing. This film manages to tick every single on of these boxes which is utterly unforgivable considering it was made in 2008.There is no excuse for this. There are dozens of films portraying gay people currently being released which specifically turn their backs on these well known negative conceits and i accuse the director of falling into the trap of being homophobic and uninformed about his subject or the genre in which he posits his movie. (Gay themed film.) 2. The director also makes the mistake of portraying rural people as essentially unsophisticated and mistrusting of the urban folk. It is silently given that they would be prejudice against the secret being harboured by the school teacher because they are small minded. However as a gay person who grew up in a very rural village, i would point out that rural people are not so small minded and heterosexually strident as portrayed. Rural people look after their own and protect what is theirs. Consequently you will find in rural communities that many different kinds of strange relationships are totally accepted and understood and that a simple village person is not so clueless about the extraordinary variations of human nature. The director did not understand the rural condition and so having built up the boy's mother to be a woman of depth and substance he reduced her by causing her reaction to homosexuality to be so disproportionally traumatic. It didn't make sense at all. It's not such a big deal. But it was made a big deal because nobody was really ever good friends with each other in this film. I didn't buy the tears and drama. It was wrong. I think she would have been much more clued up and confrontational and suffice to say she needed to produce any other reaction other than the one she made in order for this movie to break the mold. This film was made by someone who doesn't quite grasp the nature of the contexts he portrays. It was a missed opportunity to play against the usual clichés and he eventually fell into all the well worn and outmoded narrative traps that cinematic discourse has spent the past 30 years exposing.