阿黛尔还没吃晚餐

Famed New York detective Nick Carter (Docolomanský) in Prague, solving the mysterious disappearance of a dog, the cultural appropriation is tongue-in-cheek, a debonair but ashen Docolomanský doesn’t intend to ridicule Yankee callowness or hubris, his Carter is confidently resourceful, naively intrepid, and above all things, a gadget man, buffeting bums on seats with gee-whiz contraptions. 40-odd years after, Oldrich Lipský’s DINNER FOR ADELE remains an under-appreciated doozy.

Those who are looking for a convoluted detective procedural is destined to be disappointed, no myth is concealed in this spectacular novelty, DINNER FOR ADELE is a parody of mystery story, deduction functions only in a rather puerile level, the arch-villain is a botanist who cultivates carnivorous plants with big eyeballs (they are conditioned to prey or even weep to the tune of certain classical refrains) only to exact a petty revenge against a mischance in his school days, and Milos Kopecký who plays him emotes devilish broadly. Logic and coherence is wanting hither and thither, every step of the plot development is haphazard, for instance, in hindsight, you may wonder why kill the dog in the first place?

For all its jerry-built structure, Lipský’s film excels itself as an astonishing achievement of visual innovation. The titular Adele is a gigantic triffid, whose human-like maw is concretized by Jan Svankmajer’s cutting-edge stop-motion animation. A jaw-dropping face-changing (plus paunch-eliminating) process that stops short of entering the uncanny valley, and manifold variegated filters, quaint iris shots, zany cel animation, appealing animatronics (operating on those sentient vines), etc. the film is a rich seam of brainwaves from both the prop-and-gizmo and special effect sections, a laudable tradition of Czechoslovakian cinema, whose surrealistic élan can be traced back to their “new wave” era of the ‘60s, and here Lipský’s flourish surmounts the stale narrative formula and tops it off with a chase between a hot balloon and an airborne bicycle, and guess what, it is not Carter himself who takes down the villain in the finish line!

National pride is given plenty room in the character of police commissar Ledvina (Hrusínský), who is assigned as Carter’s sidekick, but a beer-quaffing, sausage-scarfing Hrusínský almost steals the show with his bang-up comic pace and miffed befuddlement, always a hawker of national food and beverage, he is also stalwart, not a buffoon to be laughed at. Gender attributes are fashioned less notably, the stock expression of femininity versus masculinity is that a woman caves in when her frou-frou or millinery is in danger whereas a man’s virility is indexed to his power of destruction, but put under the comical milieu, they are innocuously funny.

Fetchingly welding its lowbrow charm with high-wire technique, DINNER FOR ADELE is a fuzzball of goofiness, delight and hilarity, it doesn’t challenge you intellectually but leads you down its flesh-devouring garden path of unthinkable delectation, savor it at your own peril.

referential entries: Pavel Jurácek’s CASE FOR A ROOKIE HANGMAN (1970, 8.0/10); Jan Svankmajer’s ALICE (1988, 6.2/10).

English Title: Dinner for Adele

Original Title: Adéla jeste nevecerela

Year: 1978

Genre: Comedy, Crime, Fantasy

Country: Czechoslovakia

Language: Czech

Director: Oldrich Lipský

Screenwriters: Jirí Brdecka, Oldrich Lipský, John Russel Coryell

Music: Lubos Fiser

Cinematography: Jaroslav Kucera

Editing: Miroslav Hájek

Cast:

Michal Docolomanský

Rudolf Hrusínský

Milos Kopecký

Václav Lohniský

Ladislav Pesek

Nada Konvalinková

Martin Ruzek

Kveta Fialová

Olga Schoberová

Zdenek Díte

Rating: 7.5/10