: The twin virtues of innocence and experience are never far away in Svankmajer's films. Here, a young girl descends into the cellar to collect potatoes and enters an aggressive world of rat-like shoes, strange people who bake coal-cakes, an enormous cat and live potatoes. Svankmajer here reworks the Alice theme with a malicious wit and emotional ambivalence that makes it the most disturbing of his films.