In his fanciful reinvention of the “lunatic-in-the-attic” tale tradition that dates back to The Cat and the Canary, Svoboda blends narrative and stylistic elements that invoke, simultaneously, Roman Polanski, Billy Wilder, Maya Deren, and Dario Argento. Uncle Cyril lives in a mansion with his family, believing himself to be an invisible man. But Petr, who hopes to marry the beautiful Sona, soon discovers the curse of the “House of Hajn.” Though released one year before the Velvet Revolution changed the face of Czechoslovakia, and based on a key psychological novel written in 1937, this is a picture which transcends its particular time and place to explore such universal themes as fate, lust, madness, and, as the opening line reveals, the (im)possibility of “happiness.”