“The right film for anyone willing to be as open-hearted as it is.”

It is often easy for people to forget or take for granted that emotional transparency demands a lot of bravery, because even the most sincere expressions of emotion are bound to be misunderstood by people who lack the imagination or empathy to be able to identify with experiences that they cannot immediately relate to. 

With Chica Checa (a Spanish translation of “Czech Girl”), an expertly structured, tone-juggling, dual-faceted coming out story, Šimon Holý deserves the highest praise for fearlessly following his convictions and instincts in making the film that he felt this needed to be, trusting it to find the audience who needs this instead of trying to win over the unwinnable. 

An empty nest is difficult for any mother to adjust to, but you could argue that Zdena, a postwoman living in a small Czech village, has more on her plate than the average mother feeling sad about missing her kids. Zdena has been widowed for years, her mother is in her twilight years, and her son Lukas is settled in France, where he has been working in a bank and living with a roommate. Sensing that these are, indeed, her mother’s final days, Zdena warns him that if he wants to see his grandma one last time, he should come home. Lukas makes the trip, and as he and Zdena visit his grandmother in the hospital, the first words out of her mouth are, “Have you called Helena?”

“Who is this Helena?” Lukas wonders aloud as he and Zdena drive back to her home. Well, it turns out Granny got this idea that Helena Vondráčková, a legendary Czech pop icon, should come to visit one last time, because her happiest memory is of Helena performing at her agricultural cooperative. Lukas has a solution: Grandma is already practically blind and deaf, so maybe Lukas could go in full drag as Helena and perform in the hospital? At first laughing it off as an unserious suggestion, Zdena becomes increasingly annoyed as he insists that this is worth considering, because she worries that the nursing staff would mistake him for being gay. “Mom, I am gay. And I don’t work for a bank, I’m a drag queen.” Well, there could definitely be worse spontaneous coming out strategies: if he was going to drop the “I’m gay” bomb, he might as well drop an even bigger and more shocking one to minimize the first, because Zdena is horrified, blurting an accusatory, “What else have you been hiding?”

Šimon Holý uses the rest of Chica Checa to study how mother and son close the distance between them, effortlessly letting its tone evolve, rooted primarily in comedy but letting the dramatic moments build to their crescendo, often even within a single scene. Pavla Tomicová, in a second collaboration with Holý for which she had to fight because of his reluctance to repeat his casting decisions, proves she was right to insist. Every frame of her screen time, from the limitless variety in her expressions and reactions to the chemistry that she builds with Jan Cina, confirms that the role of Zdena had to be hers. And Cina, a winner of StarDance (the Czech version of Dancing with the Stars), and a graduate of the Music and Drama Department of the Prague Conservatory, lets his dancer’s training, movement and actorly preparation take over to bring Chica Checa, Lukas’s drag persona, to life in the eventual performance of Helena Vondráčková’s “Dlouhá noc” (in English, “Long Night”). Despite obvious reverence for drag as a legitimate artform, Holý wisely uses Chica Checa’s drag appearances sparingly and when appropriate, preventing this from becoming a gimmick that overstays its welcome. Instead, Holý chooses to highlight the comedic and dramatic abilities of his two very talented leads, staging scenes to build a relationship between Zdena and Lukas that feels like a real mother-son relationship, where scenes of conflict and bickering resolve in a natural, realistic way, rather than feeling like artificial, over-written ‘movie’ scenes. 

A superficial glance at Chica Checa may lead some to conclude that its stakes are low and predictable because of how quickly Zdena overcomes homophobia and accepts her son’s identity as a gay man and drag artist, but there are legitimate reasons why it is important that her ideological and emotional transformation develops the way it does. Zdena’s initial revulsion and resistance to homosexuality and drag does not come from a place of deep-seated bigotry: she simply comes from a way of life where historically it has been difficult for queer people to live openly. Of course it is unfortunate when the beliefs people are raised with are ones of hostility, but they may never have had the opportunity to challenge their own beliefs, given how unlikely it is for them to have personally known an openly queer person. “There aren’t many people like you here,” a family friend tells Lukas at his grandmother’s funeral, and he corrects her, “There are. You’d be surprised.” In rural communities, queer people are hidden in plain sight, and many could live their lives believing that they haven’t actually known such a person, when they have. Probably even more than one! 

As Lukas reveals himself to the people around him and Zdena, it is a relief to see how Šimon Holý understands that the reactions do not need to be contrived gasps and pearl-clutching. People respond with platitudes like, “Let everyone do what they want as long as they don’t hurt anyone,” which sound like cliches, but these are the things one frequently hears in these situations nowadays, and Holý is simply accurately reading the room. It’s a hopeful message, one that can be very helpful to closeted people: coming out is still scary for many people, even at a time when each generation is more open-minded and less bothered by how you live your life. When you finally are able to summon the courage to take this difficult step, often you’ll find that it isn’t that big a deal: sometimes even the people you come out to aren’t as bothered by it as they would have expected. Zdena is frequently shown as very uncomfortable in these situations, and while there is an element of shame which she is still learning to overcome, it becomes clear that her awkwardness comes from the fear of seeing people potentially hurt her son; with every new interaction, you can see the progression of how Zdena is able to relax a little bit more.

Ultimately Zdena embraces her son, his career, and the life he has with his boyfriend, because she’s a mother who loves her son. When somebody praises her for being so unexpectedly open-minded, Zdena asks the person if they have children, going on to explain, “When your kids grow up, you’ll feel the same. There is nothing we wouldn’t do for our children.” With no indication of a religious barrier or some other source of deep-seated bigotry, this is the natural evolution of how a mother loves her child. And often it is the non-conformity of their child, who they’re going to love regardless, which opens their eyes to tastes, identities or lifestyles of which they were ignorant, showing them the normality.

The history of queer cinema includes so many examples of films where coming out is a traumatic, miserable experience, where the protagonists are punished and suffer for it. Here it is a huge relief that Holý understands how times have changed, and what a contemporary coming out story looks and sounds like. And not only is this story more authentic, but its message of hope has the potential to empower, embolden, and encourage queer people to take this step and show their loved ones how rewarding it would be to let go of their prejudices and be the supportive pillars that they are needed to be. It’s difficult to even dream of how important this film could be for Czech children, teenagers, young adults, or even mature adults who haven’t felt safe enough to come out (or even for the ones who already have), to hear and see a film like this in their own language. And although this is a spirited love letter to Czech culture, the reach of Chica Checa doesn’t have to end there: Chica Checa is the right film for anyone willing to be as open-hearted as it is.