This experimental Czechoslovakian film is a real head-scratcher as I can barely understand a fraction of what it’s trying to do. The key may be that it was made when the country was still under Communist control and this level of obfuscation was necessary to get its anti-establishment message past the censors. The two female characters get up to all kinds of crazy antics but the one line they keep repeating is that nothing really matters suggesting a deep-rooted apathy to life. The visuals are striking certainly and there is plenty of creativity as it switches between types of shots and pair the movements of the two sisters with sound effects. Still this is just way too weird and incomprehensible for me.

Interspersed with shots of warfare, two young women muse that in a world that has gone bad, they might as well as bad themselves. Creaking sounds accompany their jerky movements, as if they were puppets or robots. Later, one of them is shown in a restaurant with an older man, apparently on a date. The other woman appears, is introduced as the sister, and proceeds to order and consume a large amount of food and drinks. All the while, she mocks the man and interferes with the date. At the end, both women leave the man on a departing train, laughing at their own antics. Another scene places them in a nightclub where they watch a 1920s style dancing couple. They become increasingly drunk and rowdy, leading them to be thrown out of the club. There are many other similar scenes that make it evident that the women freely date many men to take advantage of them. At one point however they realize that they are no longer being noticed and they wonder if they even exist at all.

The whole thing is a wild juxtaposition of scenes so it’s pointless to try to interpret it as any kind of coherent story. Some of the shots are in vibrant color, others in black and white, yet others are tinted or filtered. Jump cuts and weird editing add to the confusion, including one segment in which the women apparently cut each other into pieces with scissors. This is a film designed to cause maximum shock and outrage. Sinking naked into a bathtub filled with milk must have been quite a sight back then, though the effect is muted these days. The scene of the two women mindlessly indulging themselves with a full banquet of food however is probably one of the purest depictions of gluttony in cinema. Even if you struggle to make sense of what it is trying to say, it’s hard to deny that it’s striking and poetically surreal. I think it’s worth noting that its director Věra Chytilová is a woman and that may be why many consider this film to have feminist themes.

My own first impression is that it’s about two minor goddesses who descend onto the mortal plane to wreck havoc. In that sense, it doesn’t seem specifically feminist so much as a general rebellion against the establishment and proper mannerly behavior. It just so happens that the establishment is dominated by men, and older men, at that. There are all kinds of contradictions in its messaging which must surely be intentional. While being an obvious condemnation against overconsumption, it still portrays the two women in a somewhat heroic light and shows how empty it is when they promise to be good. Similarly they cause trouble everywhere they go and are thrown out of the club, but seem genuinely dismayed when it seems that the people around them stop noticing them. So it’s not just that they indulge themselves in whatever they enjoy without restraint. They must be seen doing it as a highly visible form of protest.

As I noted, what isn’t shown in the film might be as important as what is. The motto at the end explicitly states that it is dedicated to those who are most outraged over trivial matters. As awful as the behavior of the two women in here are, it is of course nothing compared to the horrors and hypocrisies under Communist rule and filmmakers aren’t allowed to show any of that. So this was the best that Chytilová could do under the circumstances. I’m not sure how well it holds up in the annals of cinema but I do have to respect the effort and the ingenuity.