Cozinhar F*der Matar

In her new film, Mira Fornay focuses on the dynamic of dominance in partnered relationships, or rather the games associated with it and the roles that we adopt when playing them, up to the point of losing our own identity. She works with these issues – appropriately for their nature – in the form of an absurdist drama in which nonsense and Dadaism meet the video game logic inherently contained in the fable of the cock and the hen (the principle on which the vast majority of RPGs are based), as well as the narrative constructs of Run Lola Run and Edge of Tomorrow (whose alternate title Live Die Repeat was surely the inspiration for the foreign festival title Cook F** Kill). An essential role here is played by the accurately observed setting of ordinary small-town relationships, enhanced by the aesthetic of Sun, Hay and Strawberries, though it radically refuses to slip into the accessibility and cheerful joviality of that aforementioned Czech classic, instead tenaciously following the path of creative experimentation. It is not at all easy to resist the superficial rejection of the film as being irrationally bizarre, because in addition to the attributes described above, its creator intersperses the film with a number of enigmatic and, at the same time, provocatively radical and ridiculous elements. Nevertheless, the film embeds itself in the viewer’s mind thanks to its clear distinctiveness and indisputable purposefulness and forces us to reflect on it in a way that leads us to fully appreciate it. Cook F**k Kill is one big WTF and Mira Fornay is a creative lunatic, but behind all of the madness there is a method, logic and an unexpectedly powerful statement about the nature of relationships and the tangle of unavoidable tragedies and regret that arise from it all. (22/02/2020)

I like to watch an artsy film from time to time, but this was pretty extreme, even for me. One can probably appreciate the author's original approach to the theme of family violence, but unfortunately the end result is not so glorious. Mira Fornay should realize that you can't keep on making movies without a positive response from the audience. Unless she wants to finance them herself. However, Regina Rázlová definitely deserves praise for her very precise and mature performance as the selfish mother of the main character. (45%) (22/07/2022)