A Single Mom Travels with Her Disabled Son

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…