Product: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Two-Disc Special Edition) (2006)
Rating: 3.0
essentially a sex story, neglecting the deeper themes of the book
This is a film about young, very beautiful people having sex. You have a libertine doctor, who attracts women like flies and treats them like flies. Indeed, his fly is rarely zipped. He has an amazing lover, Lena Olin in her prime, but then he meets a serious girl (Binoche). Which woman a male viewer prefers is a great rorschach test. Oh, and the background is the Prague Spring of 1968, all the way through the Soviet crackdown.Unfortunately, this is far closer to pornography than the psychological and political masterpiece that is Kundera's philosophical novel. Indeed, there is very little explanation of the characters' motivations. For example, in the book, it is clear that the doctor is both afraid of women and angry at them, having just lost his daughter in a bad divorce - it is the key to his character and there is nothing about that in the film. The same can be said of his women, however lovely they are. And the politics? It is merely events that occur as if in passing, changing their situations but with little else to say.Recommended tepidly.