Buttoners

Popular winner of a Rotterdam 1998 Tiger Award, this delightfully droll feature consists of six stories: the first, set in Japan, take place just before the bomb drops on Hiroshima, and the rest, set in the Czech Republic, take place 50 years later to the day. Initially, it's hard to discern a linking theme between Japanese mystified by American swearing, lovers indulging their passion in the back of a taxi, a man with a very bizarre perversion, and another whose expertise lies in spitting at trains, but gradually, as the film becomes increasingly offbeat and hilarious, Zelenka's concern with cause and effect, chance and destiny, responsibility and forgiveness emerges with intriguing, consistently surprising results. The imaginative blend of social satire, historical speculation, sci-fi and downright surrealism is sometimes reminiscent of late Buñuel, though the lasting impression is of a highly original black comedy not quite like anything else.