Plot
Johanka (Milka Zimková) had a fling with a well-digger (Peter Vonš) she had not met before and who, she was most likely certain, would never be around again. About 18 years later, she is a single woman respected and recognized at the local co-op farm where she works − except that it does not translate to the same compensation for her as for the male workers − who keeps turning down her lifelong suitor, friend and neighbor Berty (Peter Staník). Her 18-year-old daughter Paulína (Veronika Jeníková) commutes by bus to work in the nearby city, which gives the village gossips the occasional opportunity to remind her of her unknown father. A resultant conflict with her mother makes Paulína take up residence in the city.
Johanka, prodded by her also-single friend Jozefka (Marie Logojdová) who maintains that a woman without a man is nothing, begins to woo the new teacher Jarek (Jiří Klepl) only to discover later that he is married. Paulína, in the meantime, loses her virginity to the soldier Jirka (Ivan Klečka) who promptly makes himself scarce. Johanka fails to consider that she actually has a better life than some of her married neighbors, begins to see abortion or marriage as Paulína's only options, and places personals on her behalf. Although Štefan (Ľubomír Paulovič), one of the men who respond, turns out to be less than ideal, Paulína falls for him.
As Štefan's car breaks down on the way to the elaborate wedding party and the cake adorned with a doll he is bringing begins to melt in the heat, Paulína, in her wedding dress and tipsy before the ceremony, suffers miscarriage, perhaps as a result of Johanka's earlier attempt to induce abortion that would look as if it occurred spontaneously. The car that carries Paulína to the hospital passes Štefan's car towed by a farm tractor, but none of the involved notice.
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Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“But, when to Sin our byast Nature leans,
The careful Devil is still at hand with means;
And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruine Kings.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)