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"An entrancing hippie-dippie oratorio on gender combat that doesn't retell Genesis so much as slip it a microdot." - Village Voice
There have been few filmmakers as willing to completely carve apart the conventions of cinema as Czech pioneer of the feminist avant-garde Vera Chytilová (Daisies), and of all her films, perhaps the most inventive was Fruit of Paradise (MIFF 1971), her explosive 1970 re-imagining of the Eden myth.
Eve and Joseph are staying at a holiday house with a number of other couples. Eve suspects that Joseph is cheating on her and tries to feed him the Apple of Knowledge to confirm her fears. But is total knowledge truly worth it?
A vast symbolist head-trip masquerading as relationship drama, Fruit of Paradise is an utterly unexplainable, totally intoxicating rush of surrealist imagery, psychedelic mayhem and experimental soundscapes (by the great Czech composer Zdenek Liska).
D Vera Chytilová P Pavel Jurácek, Jaroslav Kucera, Bronka Ricquier S Vera Chytilová, Ester Krumbachová WS Bonton L Czech w/English subtitles TD 35mm/1970