Part of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s mission is to foster greater understanding through world cinema. This year 72 Foreign Language films were submitted for Golden Globes consideration. Here is an overview of one of them.

40 year-old Slávek Horák is a young and successful Czech commercial director who has won numerous advertising prizes and studied film making in Prague, although he grew up in the country’s southern district of Moravia. It is in the rolling hills of his home region that he has set his debut feature Home Care. The film follows Vlasta (Alena Mihulova) as she does her rounds of house calls around the countryside, tending to an assortment of variously eccentric patients. Even though she works long hours and also has to tend to a largely ineffectual husband at home, she exudes a sunny inclination to self-sacrifice that has all around therapeutic effects.

One night as she makes her way home from a distant house call, an incident alters the course of her steady existence and this quintessential nurturer will find herself in the unusual position of herself needing the care of others. The situation upends her life and that of those around her gently tragicomical effect and sends her on a journey of belated self-discovery and, perhaps, fulfillment.

Horák deftly manages a sweetly ironic tone, which one senses owes much to the nuanced portrayal of the characters’ regional and “dialectical” ways, in the depiction of a small-town life replete with colorful types. The director’s own mother was a nurse and the authenticity no doubt owes to his intimate knowledge of the milieu: Horák’s very own hometown of Zlin where he filmed.

“I chose to play the journey of self-discovery with a very particular local twist”, says Horák, “(with) drama and comedy always balancing each other. This specific approach enriches the emotional experience – and this was my vision, to communicate subtly, yet directly ‘from heart to heart’, even if the film risked bordering on the naive. After all, it is a story of a good-hearted, simple character getting to know herself late in life, so a certain bittersweet kindness and my fondness for these characters were absolutely crucial for finding a true feel for this film.”

Home Care all in all is a gently bittersweet dramedy that signals an assured vision.

Luca Celada