Kolya.

THE Academy Award for best foreign film went this year to the Czech Kolya, by Jan Sverak, starring his father, Zdenek, and, in the title part, the Russian five-year-old Andrej Chalimon. This is the story of Louka, a middle-aged cel- list in the Czech Philharmonic, fired for political reasons (the time is 1989, just before the Velvet Revolution) and reduced to playing at funerals. A com- pulsive womanizer, Louka is also heavily in debt, which is why he reluctantly agrees to an arranged (and illegal) marriage with a young Russian woman, a means to pay his creditors and even buy a small car. That the woman is a beauty helps; that she promptly runs off to Germany and her married lover, sticking Louka with her small son, doesn't.

The body of the film concerns the growing affection of Louka and Kolya, with the musician teaching the boy Czech, and the child teaching the man life. For it is in his paternal responsibilities that the philanderer specializing in adulterous wives finds, at last, true meaning, and eventually even monogamy; whereas Kolya gets what he lacked most, a father. But the path to this happy resolution is fraught with comic and not so comic pitfalls, and the ending is merely bittersweet, but uplifting.

That sounds wonderfully wise, doesn't it? Yet the film never gets beyond sur- faces, is episodic to the point of randomness, and aims at nothing higher than feelgoodism with a veneer of maturity. Yes, it is interesting that Louka is an over-the-hill Lothario who nevertheless scores with lovely young women; that Kolya is neither angelic-looking nor especially fragile, but an ordinary little boy with peasant features; and that many key scenes take place at comic funerals. Still, the film coasts along complacently from cliche to cliche, and although papa Zdenek is an accomplished actor and son Jan a dutiful director, the Sverak cottage industry does not hit home.

What Kolya did for me, though, was to bring back memories of another Czech film about classical musicians, Ivan Passer's Intimate Lighting. That is one of the all-time greats, and if you haven't seen it, move heaven and earth to do so. Ditto if you have seen it: it demands periodic revisiting.