Maple, blood and curse Mysterious film work. Director Stefan Uger by the time of the filming of “Maple and Juliana” was already an experienced filmmaker, but this film is more like the work of the debutant, so he is twitchy, uneven, angular. The film consists of small novels, based on folk songs and ballads, they are united by three heroes, wandering musicians. The plots are one more terrible than the other, but oddly enough, the atmosphere is not gloomy, despite the overwhelming number of curses, poisonings, diseases, murders. The main characters are a trio of nameless hippish, uncouth musicians, consisting of the dodgy and greedy Gustav Valakh, the aggressive and uncouth Yuri Kukura and the mumli-zaika Martin Guba. As if left to themselves, actors are fooling, screaming, fighting, running, constantly slipping and falling. They also play their instruments without much effort. Sometimes it’s even fun to look at it.
Of the many creepy novels, I will highlight the first, about how a mother accidentally cursed her daughter, who turned into the notorious javor-maple from which the musicians made their damned instruments, with which they now wander through Moravia sowing around grief and death. The best story tells about lovers Anichka and Janichka (Zuzana Kotsurikova and Ivan Paluch), at their wedding, the evil relatives of the groom poisoned Anichka, the bride in an unconscious state goes to die in her mother’s house. The story was truly poetic and sad. The film was decorated with cold music of composer Ilya Zelenka, with singing melodies.
To become frightening plots and the picture, the nature in the film is harsh (the shooting took place in the area of the Sulov rocks in Slovakia), not the holiday for the eyes to which the viewers of Czechoslovak fairy tale films are accustomed, we will add to this not always clear camera work and schematized, monotonous costumes.
Bottom line: “Klen and Juliana” is definitely not a fairy tale for children, but it also does not pull on the arthouse, of course, folklore is always interesting, but this time the attempt to shoot something adult according to folk horror stories was not quite successful, controversial and confused.