I, Olga Hepnarova

I, Olga Hepnarova is a biopic about the last woman to be executed in Czechoslovakia. As a young girl, we see the titular Olga bullied and failing to connect with her fellow students. This disconnect follows her to her home life with her traditional parents. As an adult, Olga begins work and again, fails to relate to most people or feel joy. Despite her struggle with connecting emotionally, Olga has a handful of female lovers during this time. After a criminal incident, Olga is fired from her job and begins working as a truck driver. She also begins seeing doctors at a psychiatric hospital. All of this is to no avail as Olga, fed up with feeling ostracized and victimized decides to drive a car into a busy sidewalk, killing eight people.

There were a lot of ways the filmmakers could have chosen to frame I, Olga Hepnarova. What they chose was perhaps not the most interesting option. Olga is portrayed as likely having antisocial personality disorder. In and of itself, this is not a problem. It’s totally valid to portray a woman who who killed eight people as a sociopath. But because they do portray her like this, Olga becomes difficult to know as a protagonist. She’s cold, closed off and her emotional responses feel random. While there is obvious truth to that being how people with antisocial personality disorder are, there have definitely been fictional depictions of such people that are better at letting the audience in and understanding this character.

I, Olga Hepnarova also chose to neuter itself of most potential commentary this story could have had. I do understand that they didn’t want to suggest that Olga’s crime was justified but this meant they overlooked some decent themes they could have dug into. They could have chosen to do some sort of commentary about the role of women or queer people in society or just how the communist state was oppressive. Much as any of these factors would never have excused Olga’s actions, it would have added flavour to the film and its time period had they had chosen to explore greater societal issues through this story.

In regards to how they portray Olga’s queerness, it’s a mixed bag. Its actual depiction is fairly matter of fact and Olga generally doesn’t seem to feel any conflict about liking women. She also doesn’t experience much homophobia. Olga just sometimes finds women she likes, has sex with them and fails to form an emotional connection. Her queerness is not sensationalized in that light, which is good. On the other hand, these scenes generally involve nudity from one of both of its female actors. There’s more nudity in this movie than there needed to be given the fact that this story required exactly zero nude scenes.

I, Olga Hepnarova is a very chilly movie. But that’s intentional so I guess you’d call it a success. Still, it’s not the most pleasant thing to watch. I, Olga Hepnarova is a cold, damp sock of a movie with an unknowable, unlikable protagonist. Still, as much as I can imagine how this movie could be better, I can imagine many more scenarios where it would be worse. As the movie stands, it is largely competent but falters due to its lack of understanding in its lead character and refusal to delve deeper into the societal problems at the time.

Overall rating: 6.1/10

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