Zuzana Kirchnerová’s road-trip movie “Caravan” opens with a series of idyllic holiday scenes. A wide shot of a tranquil swimming pool. A beach ball, close up, with iridescent sequins inside. Lambent rays of sunshine bouncing lazily off the surface of the pool. A breathy voiceover whispers, “It’s going to be nice, David. You’ll see.” The whisperer is revealed as a mother, reassuring her child as they lie next to each other in bed under a white sheet. If Terrence Malick directed a commercial for an Italian holiday home, it would go something like this sequence. However, the idyll is a short-lived mirage.
Filmed mainly in Italy’s Reggio Calabria, as well as Bologna and the Czech Republic, this is the story of 45-year-old single mom Ester (Ana Geislerova) and 15-year-old David (David Vodstrcil), whose holiday with comfortable middle-class friends is disrupted when the pair are asked by the family they are supposed to be staying with to move into a caravan. This unexpected request is precipitated by the friends’ inability to cope with David’s behavior: He is intellectually disabled, and this sometimes results in explosively physical outbursts. Exhausted and piqued after overhearing a patronizing conversation about David, Ester leaves in the caravan, taking her son on an impromptu drive, during which they are joined by livewire free spirit Zuza (Juliana Brutovska).
“Caravan” marks the return of Czech filmmaking to the official selection at Cannes after a gap of 30-odd years, and so far, Kirchnerová is also the only Czech filmmaker ever to win the Premier Prix at the Cinéfondation in Cannes — back in 2009. So what took her so long to capitalize on that win? The focus of her body of work to date on the obligations of female caregivers likely provides the answer. Building on short-film work about a teenage girl’s struggle to provide care for a bedridden grandparent (Baba), and a docu-drama following four women through pregnancy (“Four Pregnancies”), “Caravan” is a film firmly rooted in the experience of what it is to provide fulltime care for another human being while also trying to exist as yourself. In Ester’s case, the self is what bears the brunt of her labor, her existence as anything beyond caregiver gradually eroded, with no end in sight.
Partly as a result of the road-trip format, “Caravan” isn’t tightly plotted, with vignettes unfolding in fairly interchangeable order as Ester, David and Zuza attempt to make their way in the world. The subject of sex rears its head in a number of ways, sometimes in relation to David’s status as a curious teenager, but more often around his mother, as Ester tries to navigate what romance might look like for someone in her situation.
Dating as a single parent is already fraught with the dilemma of how, when and if to disclose the existence of your child, a decision as much about the child’s welfare as anything else, but which also tends to confer the status of a secret that must be managed on single parenthood. Ester is dealing with very particular circumstances on top of this, managing her son’s experience of the world in a way that is different from the majority experience of parenting a teenager.
One standout scene in Ester’s own love life handles an ambiguity around sexual consent in a way that feels altogether unique: Ester is propositioned by an old farmer who has employed her and Zuza as casual laborers. At first unsure, Ester allows the guy to touch her, and as a viewer the scene is ambiguous. To Zuza, when she stumbles across them, this is clearly a dirty old man coercing her friend, and she reacts with forthright anger, whisking Ester away and off the farm. Shortly thereafter, Ester breaks down in tears, doubling down on the ambiguity of the viewer experience, before she clarifies: She was actually enjoying herself. Zuza is all apologies and laughter.
David, meanwhile, is “getting that peach fuzz on the chin”, as Zuza puts it, and knowing exactly how to handle his burgeoning interest in other bodies is a question the film leaves fairly open. Rooted in Kirchnerová’s own life raising a child with Down syndrome and autism, the film has a fundamental tenderness running throughout, while tougher scenes earn their place at the table with their sense of authenticity and personal testimony.
Like a small child, David expresses his anger physically and without restraint, though he has the strength of a robust young man. He expresses his anger without any filter, but this isn’t his fault — which doesn’t change the fact that his punches and scratches cause serious damage. Watching Ester attempt to navigate this with love but little external support is undeniably tough.
Nothing here is going anywhere narratively unexpected, but that’s okay. With some films, the pleasure is all in getting there, and with others, the same is true of intentional discomfort. This is a film bent on taking you on a sometimes sentimental but frequently painful journey, and it does so in a generally clear-eyed way, born of experience.
