Syracuse International Film Festival: Grandhotel

Rainy day people: Marek Taclik and Dita
Zabranska in Grandhotel, screening Friday at the Hotel Syracuse,
Saturday at Gifford Auditorium.

In David Ondricek’s pleasantly off-kilter Czech comedy,
Fleischman is also a budding meteorologist who clambers up to the Hotel
Jested’s weather tower to survey the skies and chart the conditions. He
always knows when it’s going to rain, which is sort of a given since
the town of Liberec, dubbed as “Europe’s pisspot,” is ensconced in a
mountainous valley region that somehow entraps the rain clouds. Comic
conflicts come from the hotel’s other eccentric employees, including
lecherous manager Jegr (Jaromir Dulava), shoplifting maid Ilja (Klara
Issova), her sleazeball boyfriend-waiter Patka (Jaroslav Plesl), pretty
but unloved housekeeper Zusana (Dita Zabranska) and occasional guest
Franz (Ladislav Mrkvicka), an old coot who claims to have once been a
Luftwaffe flyboy. Fleischman’s thematic attempts to escape Liberec,
such as handcuffing himself to a train seat, eventually pave the way
for his construction of a flying contraption, which will come as no
surprise to the few moviegoers who saw Danny Deckchair. Yet Grandhotel is often funny and flaky, with one unexpectedly raunchy moment that hasn’t turned up in a Farrelly Brothers comedy—yet. Ballroom, Friday, May 2, 5:15 p.m.; Gifford, Saturday, May 3, 9:15 p.m.