Our neighborhood community-owned theater, the Avalon, has a special showing virtually every Wednesday evening of a foreign film not normally available for view in the United States at the time. This Wednesday night we went to see a Czech (and Slovak and German and Ukrainian) film entitled “Victim”, a 2022 film which may start to receive wider distribution. So far, it has been shown in film festivals, where it has been nominated for, and won, a number of prizes. I thought it worth mentioning for reasons that I hope will become apparent.

The victim of “Victim” is a 13 year old boy, a talented gymnast, who lives with his single mother (the father has long abandoned the family) in the equivalence of public housing in a mid-sized town in the Czech Republic. But they are Ukrainian, not Czech, and the mother (whose name is Irina) is in the arduous process of trying to get Czech citizenship (which, I assume, her minor son would also get if she does).

Irina has to return to Ukraine to gather some material she needs for her citizenship application and leaves her son alone, with a friend assuring her that she would check in on him to make sure his is all right. Sadly, she learns that, late at night, her son has been seriously beaten up in the hallway of their apartment building, and has been taken to the local hospital where he injuries require immediate surgery. She leaves Ukraine and gets back to the Czech Republic as quickly as she can.

There seem to be a large number of Ukrainian immigrants around the town, and – except that they are all struggling to restart their lives – there does not appear to be any major prejudice against them. But there is tremendous prejudice against another prevalent group – the Roma, the gypsies. And as there are many Roma families in the complex in which Irina and her son (Igor) live, it seems to be, in everyone’s mind, clear that the attack on Igor could only have been done by wild, uncontrollable Roma teenagers, including one who lives in the apartment directly above Irina. And, I should add, that the anti-Roma prejudice seems to be as strong among the Ukrainian immigrants as among the ethnic Czechs.

Igor himself says he cannot identify the boys who beat him up. He only knows that there were three of them. He also says (although he seems not to be believed) that his upstairs neighbor was not one of them. The authorities reach their own conclusions and arrest and detained the Roma neighbor, and will presumably be charging him with participating in the crime.

The local, and maybe national, press pick up the story and deepen the feelings against the Roma in the town. A young man, probably in his 20s, also a gymnast, decides there should be a rally and a march to support Igor and his mother, to criticize the local government for failing to act against the Roma. The mayor, afraid of the rally, shows her own support for Irina and Igor, giving them an opportunity to move to a newly constructed building in a different neighborhood and bestowing a cash award on them.

Then, one day, Igor, still recuperating in the hospital, tells his mother that he wasn’t beaten up at all, that he was showing off for a girl in his class, climbing on the upstairs railing, and that he slipped and fell. No Roma were involved. No one else was involved.

His mother is beyond shocked. Here she had been so public with her innocent son’s predicament, she had spoken out not so much against the Roma, but for the police to find the three boys who assaulted her son. She had accepted money from the city and the mayor, she had been meeting with the young man organizing the rally (although she was ambiguous about it). She came across as a perfect mother. And what should she do now?

The Czech actress who plays the mother (Vita Smachelyuk) does a wonderful job in an emotionally complicated role. The film deals with a number of subjects: the strains on immigrants, the prejudice against certain groups of community members, how to deal with a major and unexpected family tragedy, and how to deal with a lie that has taken on a life of its own.

It’s well worth watching. You just have to find it.

Let’s change the subject.

This is a painting by Jean Pierre Cassigneul, a living French artist in his late eighties. We have a poster with another of his paintings in our guest room bath. I find this painting very appealing.

But why? It is totally flat and two dimensional. The woman, the water, the far shore. More like a collage than like a painting with depth. And look at the sail boat. It’s much too small. The woman’s hat – what are those blurry things on top of it? And why is the rim color the same as that of the background hill? And look at her nose. Does anyone have a nose that long and thin? And look at that left arm – the bend is not at the wrist, but somewhere on her forearm.

These are all flaws, aren’t they? Flaws that I identify.

So why do I like it? What makes art art anyway?