The Junk Shop

Bohoušek's junk shop is a cramped, chaotic space where odd customers and bizarre commodities collide. It is stacked with love letters and forgotten keepsakes that fuel fantasies and petty disputes. The adjacent bar functions as a social hub where rumors spread and tensions erupt, intensifying the shop's volatile atmosphere.

🎭 Beauty and Value

Objects and people are treated as commodities: Cleo's letters are priced, Mařenka is imagined as a famous portrait, and the shop runs on reputation and appearances rather than genuine connection. The characters haggle over worth, exposing how memory and affection can be reduced to price tags. The setting becomes a stage where personal histories are manipulated for profit or status.

🗿 Art and Destruction

Hanta and colleagues cut up statues of Jesus, angels and martyrs, turning sacred imagery into crude entertainment. This act highlights a tension between reverence and vulgar humor, questioning what art is allowed to become. The satire reveals how easily cultural symbols can be degraded when used for amusement.

💭 Existential Realism

Bohoušek admits that his flamboyant persona and depiction of perversion are masks born from a sense of life's pointlessness. The film repeatedly hints that meaningful purpose is hard to find, pushing characters to justify themselves through art, memory, and gossip. The mood wavers between melancholy and wry humor as characters cope with meaninglessness.