ZELARY

Ondraj Trojan (Divided We Fall) directs this period drama set during World War II in which a Czech medical student (Anna Geislerová), working for the resistance, is forced to relocate to the hinterlands with one of her patients, a rough-hewn yet gentle mountain man (György Cserhalmi). Zelary is less a story about warfare (at least until the last reel) than it is a romance -- of the mismatched pair, of the earthy peasants, and of the gorgeous remote land, seemingly so far from the troubles of 1943-44. As such, Zelary mostly charts the familiar transformation of its plucky heroine, as she subsumes her urbane background for the embrace of the country's simplicity -- a problematic course, for the filmmaker has cast her amidst mostly one-dimensional, and easily dismissed, stereotypes -- boozers, abusers and old witchy women. In Czech with subtitles. Starts Fri., Dec. 10. Squirrel Hill