Rather optimistically nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, with its parochialism, lack of histrionics and tiny budget already disqualifying it from any consideration, My Sweet Little Village is stamped through like a stick of rock with Menzel's trademark brand of gentle social critique. As so often with his work, very little happens at all: two workmen, one a simpleton and the other his put-upon senior partner, potter about their village, while a woman has an affair with the local vet and an accident-prone doctor does his rounds, sending hypochondriacs packing left, right and centre. Apart from that, the only real plot is the attempt by a big-city politician to fob the simpleton off with a flat in Prague so he can get his hands on the former's large inherited house in the village, and some careful ribbing of the authorities accompanying this - communism still had a few years left to run, after all. It's all pleasant enough, but unlikely to leave much of a deeper impression, although you would probably have to have been a Czech living at the time to get everything out of it.
5/10
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