The Devil's Mistress

The story of Lída Baarová holds the potential for a great historical film, as well as for reflection on the essentially Czech and still unaddressed issue of the moral considerations of life under totalitarianism, or rather the national guilt of ethically ambivalent everyday existence under the past regimes. However, none of that comes across in this highly ridiculous yet soul-crushing mess. In the few scenes where the film touches on the life of Lída Baarová and her career in Nazi Germany, it offers up an insipid illustration in the best case, though it rather relies on superficial exploitation of the audience’s prejudices. The Nazi leaders, the Czech collaborators and finally the unhinged mother and the young journalist are probably intended to be great roles, but they never rise above the level of ridiculously stiff caricature. In addition to the passages with Goebbels, which go far beyond the boundaries of camp thanks to the overwrought acting, writing and directing, the film contains nonsensical sequences that take Baarová’s story into unexpected genre realms. Of these, the one that stands out the most is the etude that seems to have been cut out of a vulgar teen comedy, which is appropriately highlighted by the casting of Jiří Mádl. The narrative is another story. It takes a step toward the concept of an unreliable narrator, but due to its haphazardness, it ends up being a mere pile of nonsensical, impotently literal and boorishly phantasmagorical scenes that reek of paper, cocaine and stupidity. As a result, The Devil’s Mistress is neither a great biographical film nor powerful Nazisploitation, nor an ethical drama, nor just ordinary trash. Rather, it’s just a disarming fiasco whose main constants are poor judgment and incompetence. On the other hand, the project apparently had at least some ambition to show a controversial figure of 20th-century Czech history in a different light than as a demonised collaborator (though the image of a starlet blinded by love and her own fame is barely more flattering). Paradoxically, the film itself became a subject of controversy in modern Czech culture due to the involvement of neo-Nazis, the expenditure of enormous sums, which was definitely not apparent on the screen, and the strange sell-out in the form of a VIP-studded premiere, which in line with the phrase “life imitates art” mirrored the scene of a premiere with Goebbels in attendance. But perhaps in a few decades, the case of Renč, Hubač and Landa will serve as a preview for a similarly disorderly film that will show them as tragic greats blinded by their love for tyrants and themselves. (05/13/2016)

Let's leave aside the fact that the name "Lída Baarová" is no longer the name of an actress who lived from 1914 to 2000 and worked in Czechoslovakian, German, Austrian, Italian, and Spanish cinema, lived through all sorts of things, and then kept only theater at the end of her career. "Lída Baarová" has been an affair since Standa Motl entered her life and a social event since Filip Renč entered her fate. Renč's The Devil's Mistress is something of an intersection between Requiem for a Maiden and Guard No. 47, two moments in his career when Renč realized the power of film as a social event and the power of the period piece. This film amounts to cellophane tinsel that doesn't work, unfortunately. The artistic license is beyond believability and one searches in vain for qualities in certain aspects. On the other hand, personally, I don't really care. Films have been made about the likes of Anny Ondra since the 1970s, and thankfully no such hysteria has developed around either. (01/24/2016)

Seriously? How is it even possible that Filip Renč dared to release this? A question for him to ponder. The audience might, in turn, wonder if supporting such dreck by visiting the cinema even makes sense. The scene with the faces in flames perfectly highlights the direction in which Czech cinema is heading. Terrible. (04/23/2018)

A film with ambitions and material for a European blockbuster, with a big budget (by Czech standards) and massive advertising campaign. But the result is disappointing - it’s been a long time since I saw such a disgustingly cheap piece of nonsense. Some characters are dubbed while others not, sometimes it’s exhaustingly lengthy, other times simplistic. Don't even get me started on the soundtrack. It is so inappropriate for the movie it almost made me cringe. If this is supposed to be Renč's masterpiece he had been waiting to make for years, I am afraid of what to expect from his next "regular" project. (09/21/2016)

I can't help but like this film. It's not a clear statement about the fate of Lída Baarová; overall, it's conceived more as something that could have happened, but it could be distorted in itself. The Nazis are portrayed excellently here, and so the only thing that bothered me was that Táňa didn't fit with Lída Baarová at all. (01/09/2017)