Directed by Jan Sverak (Czech Republic)

Zdenek Sverak is a very popular actor and writer in his native Czech Republic, and this latest of several joint ventures with his director son Jan has become the greatest box office success since the fall of Communism there. Sverak senior both wrote the script and plays Josef, embittered and comically curmudgeonly teacher who suddenly decides he can't take it any more and resigns. Think One Foot in the Grave and you get the idea.

Life at home with his nice wife is dull, he needs people, particularly of the female variety, and watching without relish his fellow oldies walking meekly round the park, he decides on a more active retirement, at first trying unsuccessfully & comically to be a bicycle courier. Then at his local supermarket he finds a surprisingly perfect niche, literally, manning the bottle return window.

His longsuffering wife and glumly religious daughter consider it hardly a suitable job for an educated man, but at last he's found happiness, for there from his cubbyhole he makes friends, becoming counsellor, matchmaker, and all-round good samaritan to his quirky customers and fellow employees, marrying off his ironically named colleague 'Chatty' and clandestinely finding a new love for his divorced daughter. The threat of the coming of an automatic recycling machine hanging over the cosy new life he has created provides a suitable metaphor for the colder realities of modern life, freezing out human contact, etc etc - hardly an original notion but smartly presented. The gently observed humour, verging on the absurdist, very much in the Czech tradition of Menzl and Forman, is lovely and warm, with its benevolent optimistic view of humanity. Far less successful, and detrimental to the spirit of the film, are the unoriginal and cheesy fantasy sequences where Josef dreams of success with the ladies. Similarly an over-extended finale in a hot air balloon doesn't quite maintain the atmosphere of the rest of the film, and the final coda again sounds a bum note.

Still, it's very enjoyable, and sentimentality is kept well at bay by Josef's acerbic downbeat wit and very human failings. You'll laugh with him even when he's rather dislikeable.

Seen at NFT1, London Film Festival, 30 October 2007