And the film did meet with the good reception that they were wishing for. Zelenka's humour and sensitivity is still successful.

The story centres around the unfortunate Petr who works loading freight at Prague airport, and who has apparently settled himself with this unexciting job (taking pleasure in the small joys that it affords him - for example learning to drive a small heavy load pushing vehicle, and eventually driving it down the motorway all the way to Vinohrady.) However he is quite dissatisfied with his personal situation and the film opens with him asking one of his colleagues the best way that he might get back his girlfriend, Jana, who left him several months ago and is now living with the rather nondescript Aleš. Petr's friend insists that the only course of action is to cut off some of Jana's hair and boil it with apple leaves, then sprinkle the result over the place where the two first met. Only slightly dubious at first, Petr goes ahead with the plan. However, when he goes over to Jana's house, she is having a party, and Petr finds himself quite drunk before going forth with a pair of scissors, ending up instead cutting off a clump of hair belonging to Aleš's aunt. Petr though is not a mere idiot. He takes on his friend's advice because he is desperate, and the strength of his love and his missing of Jana compel him to act in a way that others might deem abnormal.

The film as a whole is about these people who are driven by their personal unhappiness to behave in peculiar ways. For example, Petr's neighbours Alice and Jiří, who pay him to watch them make love because, it seems, they cannot do it without a spectator. And Petr's father David, who carries his house telephone with him in his case, because it might have in it the random number that he dialled, to reach a tearful and apparently suicidal woman who made him tell her that he loved her. David takes it into a café, plugs it in there and manages to reach the woman who introduces herself as Sylvie and invites him over so that she can make a clay bust of him, before he is chased out of the cafe by a waitress who insists that he cannot do such a thing there. Petr's mother, suffering a breakdown, runs into the street and goes "Baf!" at everyone around, taking great pleasure in it. She simply wants to have an emotional impact on someone.

Zelenka describes his characters' actions in such a way that their supposedly crazy behaviour appears quite logical to us. He draws them in such a way that we instantly sympathise, and see their situations from their point of view. All the women in the film dress up in their men's clothes. "If you put on their clothes, you can get inside their heads", they say, as if it were completely obvious.

It is this slightly peculiar but tragic behaviour that fills the film, and is its strength. We are compelled by the sincerity of their emotions, and though we laugh at their actions, we do so with a hand on our hearts, always aware of the sadness of their plights. Zelenka's tragicomedy allows us to be emotionally involved and yet also detached enough to be entertained. And the airport setting is perfect for this purpose, as it is a very lonely place - watching people constantly jetting off into the sunset, one inevitably comes to wish that one was also flying somewhere exciting. Meanwhile it is also a place through which many peculiar things pass, giving opportunity for comic situations. (For example, the arrival of a mannequin in a box that the boss of cargo falls in love with.)

In the film, everything is brought to its true resolution. Jiří and Alice break up (their relationship was clearly not working if they had to pay someone to watch them in order to make love..) David starts to do things that he wants to, and discover himself, while his wife , who was ever fighting for the causes of the world while her family was falling apart (because that is easier than involving yourself in the closeness of your own personal problems), suffers a breakdown and finishes in a mental hospital. And as for Petr - he eventually manages to convince Jana that they are meant to be together. That is, before he reaches an unfortunate end. Petr's father pronounces the motto of the film, "We should just live how we live. Most of the time we don't have a choice. But we shouldn't become strangers to each other." (To, jak žijeme, je jedna věc. Většinou se s tí­m nedá nic dělat. Ale neměli bychom ztratit kontakt mezi sebou.) The people in the film are like the boxes that Petr loads. They are bundled about by fate - and they should just make the most of it.

In general the film seems a celebration of the personal peculiarities of people. David, encouraged by Sylvie, starts once more reciting the communist announcements that he used to make in the 1970s, but in his own way, injecting his own personal poeticism into it. Between Petr and Aleš, Jana chooses the more imaginative of the two. Use of bright colour in the film mirrors the vivacity of the characters' idisyncracy, as does a soundtrack of modern folky music, including lamentful violin music, recognisable from Zelenka's 2002 film Rok d'ábla. However, the story is not that simple. The conclusion of the film acts as a grave warning to the viewer about the consequences of crazy behaviour. Is Zelenka perhaps trying to imply, perhaps only as a joke, that a "conventional" way of life is, after all, much safer? Who in the end is happy? Petr's mother is in an asylum (which of course also affects David's life). Alice has left Jiří. And Petr -- in the process of making his final reunion with Jana, he is shipped into the hold of a DHL plane (and we have already been warned of the danger of this earlier in the film).

The beauty of their oddity is portrayed only up to a point. It may be portrayed as somewhat enchanting. However, it does not work in the real world. After all, Petr is still stuck in a dead-end job. It is lovely, but reality calls for some more concrete thought processes. If your head is stuck in the clouds, you will end up like Petr, being attacked by your duvet.