Original title: Otesánek
Year: 2000
Runtime: 2 hours, 18 minutes
Country: Czech Republic
Language: Czech
Subtitles: English (hard-subbed)
Genre: Animation / Fantasy / Horror

Director: Jan Svankmajer

Cast: Veronika Zilková, Jan Hartl, Jaroslava Kretschmerová, Pavel Nový, Kristina Adamcová, Dagmar Stríbrná

Plot/Synopsis:

This is Svankmejer’s fourth feature film to date (though to include his shorter pieces the number is closer to thirty – many of which remain banned inside of his own country) and those familiar with the Czech arch-surrealists work will know what to expect.

In Otesánek, which is based on an Eastern European fairy tale, a childless and hopelessly infertile couple, Karel and Bozena buy a property in the countryside and whilst working in the garden Karel unearths an oddly shaped tree stump. With a little attention, he fashions the stump into a near human form and presents it to his melancholy wife. To his horror, she is delighted with the gift and takes to treating it as her own son.

Driven to distraction by her desire for a child, Bozena feigns pregnancy with the aid of nine numbered cushions of increasing size and the ‘child’ is eventually brought back to their town house. This is much to the protest of Karel – who fears that neighbours and colleagues will think the woman and himself insane and begins to regret creating the object. ‘Little Otik’, as the stump is named, comes to life – much to the further horror and disbelief of Karel who walks in on his wife suckling the stump, and begins to behave like a human baby. A very hungry human baby – as a few of the building’s residents and visitors discover in an unpleasant manner…

All the Svankmejer trademarks are here, the exaggerated sound effects, close-ups and obsessions with food and the process of eating, tongues, eyeballs, teeth and a precocious little girl in the form of Alzbetka who knows just how to deal with dirty old men.

Torrent Download
Little Otik (2000)
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