Daisies

Two young women, both named Marie, conclude that because the world is spoiled they may as well be spoiled too. What follows is a loose string of episodes in which they carry that decision to extremes, playing at being bad toward everything around them. They trick older men into paying for their meals and then walk away, scrawl on the walls of their home, disrupt a cabaret performance with an improvised dance, and turn an elegant banquet into a food fight. Their pranks grow more extravagant as they go, until the two of them are unsettled by what they have set in motion.

Věra Chytilová directed and co-wrote the film with Ester Krumbachová. It was her first feature, made in Czechoslovakia and released at the end of 1966, and stands at the start of a directing career that continued with Panelstory or Birth of a Community, A Hoof Here, a Hoof There and Traps. Jitka Cerhová and Ivana Karbanová play the two Maries, the central roles, with Helena Anýžová, Julius Albert, Jan Klusák and Marcela Březinová in supporting parts.

The film runs 76 minutes and mixes comedy with drama. It is rated 7.2 out of 10 on IMDb from around 17,000 votes, and 7.3 out of 10 on TMDB from several hundred. The two scores sit close together, suggesting a similar response from the larger and smaller audiences alike.