Editor’s Note: I, Olga Hepnarova opens in limited theatrical release today, March 24, 2017
In 1975, after a shocking crime and trial that captured the attention of the entire country, 23-year-old Olga Hepnarova became the last woman to be executed in Czechoslovakia. I, Olga Hepnarová opens about a dozen years earlier, when Olga (Michalina Olszanska) was a troubled young teen still living at home, with an abusive family and burgeoning emotional problems. A failed attempt at suicide leads her to being sent to an institution, where she continues to be beaten and abused. A few years later and Olga is a 20-something truck driver, though still looks like a young teen and isolates herself on her family’s land in a barely livable old shack. She makes regular visits to the public health facility where she repeatedly asks to be hospitalized, and is always told by the well-meaning but ineffective communist healthcare system that she has to wait just a little bit longer for treatment.
Filmed in stark, Soviet black and white (all grays, static medium shots, sparse sets), Olga looks like a parody of Eastern European arthouse cinema, though a beautiful one at times.
This fictionalized account of the real-life Hepnarova means to examine the circumstances that lead up to the infamous crime she was convicted of, but the film is no thriller or crime drama. It offers no explanations other than Olga’s own words, famously published in a newspaper at the time. There are no analyses, no explanations and no reasons because, as The Boomtown Rats sang nearly 40 years ago, what reasons do you need to be shown?
Olga hates people; she has a hell of a lot of reason to. She’s inappropriate and awkward and offensive, usually deliberately, and painstakingly alienates herself as a means of emotional protection. Olga also manages an impressive series of sexual liaisons; as soon as this terminally bored, angry and lonely woman with no people skills loses one lover, another appears, then another, and if any of them even notice her bizarre behavior, it’s chalked up to possessiveness. These sex scenes are shown in great detail; something’s gotta break up the ennui, and it might as well be gratuitous sex, even if it belies Olga’s supposed plight, and even if those scenes are so unconvincing you have to do some quick sexual geometry in your head to try to decipher what’s going on.
The sex scenes are shown in great detail; something’s gotta break up the ennui, and it might as well be gratuitous sex, even if it belies Olga’s supposed plight, and even if those scenes are so unconvincing you have to do some quick sexual geometry in your head to try to decipher what’s going on.
It’s temping to craft some kind of theory to explain it, but Olga resists all attempts to define it, much like the woman herself. Olga wants you to fill in the blanks, which would be fine if the film weren’t 97% blank by volume, the rest consisting of Olszanska’s imitation of Mathilda from Leon: The Professional, broken up occasionally by an impression of Pulp Fiction’s Mia Wallace.
Filmed in stark, Soviet black and white (all grays, static medium shots, sparse sets), Olga looks like a parody of Eastern European arthouse cinema, though a beautiful one at times. Olszanska’s performance may be derivative but it’s earnest, too, an admirable exercise in physical and emotional control. It’s an impressive perf, but the human equivalent of a blank slate, someone who stares and stares and smokes and stares some more then picks up women then goes to stare for a while longer, sounds fascinating on paper, but is a less than thrilling visual experience.
Filmed in stark, Soviet black and white, I, Olga Hepnarova looks like a parody of Eastern European arthouse cinema, though a beautiful one at times. Michalina Olszanska's performance shows an admirable emotional control; watching a film about the human equivalent of a blank slate may sound fascinating on paper, but is a less than thrilling visual experience.
