Tiny Lights

Original title: Světýlka

Directed by: Beata Parkanová

Length: 76 min. 

Country: Czech Republic

Year: 2024

Premiere: Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2024 

Synopsis: during a beautiful summer, Amálka overhears her parents fighting. As the whole family tries to distance her from what is happening, she slowly realises the truth.

RATING: 4/5

 

REVIEW

The opening shot, an opaque window, through which a blurred silhouette of a spying girl is barely visible, serves as the perfect visual metaphor of the mechanism that operates in Beata Parkanová's latest film Tiny Lights - albeit in an antithesis, as the film takes place on the other side of the window, and looks into the room through the fuzzy crevices of the decorated glass, as it is the perspective of the girl, that it closely follows.

The story - as fragmented and absent as it might seem, is simple: a young girl, Amálka, alone in a household filled by adults, plays with her cat, or by herself in general, and overhears parts of conversations, of arguments, of discussions, of interventions. It is evident that her family life is about to undertake consistent changes, even if there are only clues and hints - the grandparents make an effort in attempting to "protect" her from the truth, or the harshest moments. 

To achieve this subjectivity, Parkanová - even perhaps unknowingly - took an approach that is not dissimilar, albeit slightly less radical, from that of a wholly different film: Son of Saul by László Nemes. The framing, in the large aspect ratio of 16:9, mostly consists of  tight medium shots of the protagonist, with most of the background blurred out or visible only partially.

A summertime film, in which the warm, saturated exteriors and the shadowy, dark interiors convey in harmony the essence of the season, Tiny Lights contrasts a melancholic and anxious content with a very much lighthearted and uplifting visual tone. While in essence the dramatic effect remains dominant, this contrast conveys additionally the double layer of the protagonist's experience, lingering between the tragic nature of what is happening around her, and the playfulness of the distractions that she is bestowed.

Among the various hints, the screenplay hides a subtheme that delves in the nature of marital life: the disfunctional relationship of Amálka's parents is paralleled by that of her grandparents. While there is an idea of a sort of contrapunct between a failing marriage and a solid one, the truly interesting aspect is that there are evident cracks in the apparent solidity of the latter couple.

Tiny Lights is a film that might seem very simple at first: it does mostly consist of the methodic reproduction of a similar mechanism throughout the 76 minutes of its length; at the same time however, it is a film with a subtle multilayer, that manages to provide inputs for reflection on a larger dimension than its frame, even for a long time after its viewing.