Review: The Contradictions of the Second Series of Iveta Bartošová

The triple golden nightingale actually wakes up a few times in the trio of new, roughly hour-long episodes. But each time in exactly the same hospital room. It serves one time as an intensive care unit, where she is taken after an overdose of medication, at another time as a gynecological ambulance, where she learns that she is expecting a boy. For the director and screenwriter Michal Samir, the emotions that certain places evoke and the meanings they carry continue to be more important than realism and fidelity to the realities of the time.

After all, the protagonist, whose subjectivity is fully subordinated to the narrative, rarely perceives the world around her completely soberly. The coloring of the scenes and their intense musical undertones usually reflect Iveta’s mental state. At first, she is intoxicated by the glitter of show business. From the modest “girl from the Beskydy Mountains”, who we left in the second half of the 80s, shortly after the shocking death of her singing colleague and partner Petr Sepeši, she became one of the most successful Czechoslovak singers.

The years 1987 to 1991, when she sold out sports halls and collected one award after another, are spanned by a brisk editing sequence. Her fame and fortune literally shine from the brightly backlit shots. At the same time, the honey tinge of the image anticipates being locked in a golden cage, which will soon become the luxurious villa of her new man of destiny, the composer Ladislav Štaidl.

Samir is more interested in their jealous domestic arguments, shouting, brawling and bed games, not creative collaboration. So it aims in the same direction as the caricatures of journalists, who at the press conference in the first episode indiscreetly ask mainly about the singer’s privacy. Composing and recording hit songs or the workings of the music industry are not comparatively interesting to them.

Štaidl appears during the press conference as a heartless manipulator and liar. Not the first time and not the last time. He jumps into Iveta’s speech, knocks her down with mocking remarks and confidently claims to the publicists that he strictly separates the personal and professional spheres, even though we saw the opposite a while ago.

The toxic relationship between two characters who alternate between loving and sending each other to hell is one of the few themes unifying all three episodes. Most of the other chapters of the singer’s biography are in the miniseries more out of obligation to meet the expectations of the audience than for dramaturgical reasons. Secondary characters appear and disappear without significantly affecting the plot, supporting motifs, for example a hint of an eating disorder, remain in the corner like discarded toys.

From the list, we can gradually cross off the sold-out Lucerna with Karel Gott, the filming of the Wedding of the Vampires, the return of sister Ivana from abroad or the performance in the musical Dracula by Karel Svoboda. The series at the basic level caters to those who just want to reminisce with a nostalgic tear about the events that were dissected a few decades ago by the tabloids and leading commercial television, coincidentally also behind Iveta.

The same group of viewers, while watching episodes lacking in plot, will probably entertain themselves by comparing the actors with their role models. Anna Fialová still suffers with emotion and faithfully imitates Bartošová’s gestures and movements. An excellent casting choice was Miloslav König in the role of the deranged kidnapper, and Oskar Hes, who as Rudolf Hrušínský the youngest adds the swing to the opening of the second episode.

As a biographical drama, however, the miniseries is the least inspiring for its straightforward, overly reverent handling of Iveta Bartošová’s legacy. In fact, we are watching the story of the rise and fall of a musical icon so schematic, stripped of historical context and psychology, that it seems that the script draws inspiration not from the lives of real people, but from universal fairy-tale archetypes.

In this respect, Iveta is close to recent films about Marilyn Monroe (Blonde) or Princess Diana (Spencer). However, they were more layered, more consistent in their horror stylization and bolder in their approach to the myth of the stars being watched.

If the first series of Iveta resembled a disco version of Cinderella, the second can be seen as a melancholic variation on Beauty and the Beast. The ethereal protagonist spends most of her time locked up in the “castle” of the tyrannical egomaniac Štaidl. On the outside, mainly because she doesn’t want to be alone. Deeper motivations are difficult to pin down for most characters. Like the influential lyricist, however, she is also appropriated by other men, for whom she is only an object to fulfill their fantasies. Sometimes literally.

Right from the very beginning of the first episode, the singer is replaced by a puppet during the filming of the video clip. The end of the piece has a similarly disturbing tone – Bartošová becomes a “gift” that is delivered to Karl Gott on stage. Ondřej Ruml doesn’t look much like the legendary singer. He would pass at most as his impersonator in a TV variety show. But also thanks to this disharmony, the whole scene seems like a bad dream that could wake you up from your sleep after visiting the wax museum.

Iveta’s loss of autonomy is brought even further in the second episode, which begins relatively innocently, but then breaks into a paranoid thriller and presents a reconstruction of the infamous “kidnapping” from the beginning of May and June 1994. It is not only the event itself that is strongly disturbing. Anxiety is also caused by the skewed compositions of the excellent cinematographer Martin Douba (Blue Shadows, Traitors) and the impossibility of clearly saying what we actually witnessed.

Like princesses from fairy tales, Bartošová is constantly in the position of a passive victim, a good girl who is prevented by evil men from fulfilling her own needs and desires. Although the series takes place mainly during the unrestrained nineties, the promise of freedom is ironically not fulfilled in it. The fact that the actors hardly ever leave the interiors also contributes to the feeling of the heroine’s limited freedom.

Štaidl, who doesn’t really care if he gets rich on songs or corn, understands well that the one who can sell himself or someone else well will succeed in the new conditions. He has no problem gaining control over the singer’s image. Serial Iveta has no personality or opinions, she almost does not go through development and utters platitudes like “it’s the way it is”. She alternately longs for success and a child. The only thing that changes over the years is the length of her hair.

However, her own patterns and addictions also hinder her happiness. The more guarded she is in food, work or relationships, the more she is lost in her head and the harder it is to determine what is reality and what is imagination or barbiturate delusion. The total artificiality of the fictional world, whose aesthetics are fueled by period video clips and advertisements as well as baroque horror films by the Italian director Dario Argento, also contributes to disorientation.

There is practically no shot that is not illuminated by multi-colored lights. Even in everyday situations, the characters take poses as if they were taking pictures for a fashion magazine. The camera slowly zooms in on them or captures them upside down, from unnatural views and low views. The dissonance between different colors, genres and moods, banal content and rich form reinforces the effect of emotional confusion and a foreign, hostile world in which the heroine is lost.

In the last episode, her friend tries to explain to Iveta what it means to be emancipated, but the submissive heroine doesn’t catch on. He may be able to leave Štaidl, but character transformation, liberation and catharsis do not come even after three hours of physical and mental suffering.

The second series of Iveta is stylistically more refined, intellectually and emotionally richer, but remains a work of contradictions. It meets the expectations of viewers of Nova TV, whose offer is closely linked to the original work of the Voyo platform. It offers an emotional, slightly spicy flight through well-known tabloid cases as well as a pinch of good old-fashioned objectification, against which it seems to define itself (see the way Anna Fialová is taken during the Dracula scene).

At the same time, however, Nova’s production deviates from the number of specializing procedures involved and the confident circumvention of telenovela conventions. Even though the events are filtered with the naivety of the red library until the end, Iveta’s inability to escape her own fate is more like a horror film. There’s more going on in the images than in the loopy dialogue, and the stylistic exaggeration ultimately provides more satisfaction than the frustrating narrative.