Something Different

Věra Chytilová’s debut feature may well have invented feminist vérité in its pugilistic approach to documentary and narrative, closely intercutting the stories of two protagonists—a professional gymnast and a restless housewife—who never meet but share a similarly tracked existence. One toes a literal line of landings, vaults, and spins, ever watched over and harangued by an assortment of male coaches; the other drifts through the days, attempting to get her toddler son to behave (in some of cinema’s greatest, most realistic scenes of parenthood) and her husband to focus at all. “An unsung landmark of feminist cinema” (BAMcinématek).