‘We Have Never Been Modern’ Review: Intersex Awareness Brings Unexpected Urgency to a Handsome Czech Period Drama

variety.com:

Guy Lodge Film Critic A lacquered Czech period piece with surprisingly topical interests at its core, “We Have Never Been Modern” rather ambitiously borrows its title from a key text by the late French philosopher Bruno Latour — in which he argued that humanity’s distinction between nature and our own culture is a wholly modern development, and one we’d do best to move away from.

While Latour’s ideas can indeed be mapped onto a story that charts modern society’s fixation on human advancement against its rejection of human difference, Matěj Chlupáček’s gripping, gleamingly produced second feature isn’t as academic as all that: Ultimately a humane message movie planting flags for both women’s liberation and queer rights, this Karlovy Vary competition premiere could easily resonate with festival and arthouse audiences away from home turf.

Following extensive work in TV, shorts and music videos, Chlupáček’s return to the big screen arrives a decade after his precocious debut feature “Touchless,” which unspooled in Karlovy Vary when he was a mere teenager.

A youthful brashness remains in “We Have Never Been Modern,” even aside from the sensitive, once-taboo subject matter of Miro Šifra’s script: Arrestingly off-kilter compositions, seasick handheld camera moves and stylized multimedia flourishes signal the film’s intent to break from the staid behavior of much Czech-Slovak heritage cinema, just as its protagonist Helena (leading Czech star Eliska Krenková, from “Winter Flies” and “Borders of Love”) increasingly chafes against the patriarchal, capitalistic norms of 1930s Czechoslovakia.