My Sweet Little Village is a 1985 film from what was then Czechoslovakia and is now The Czech Republic, directed by Jiri Menzel.
It is a slice-of-life portrait of a sleepy little country village. Pavek and Otik are, respectively, a truck driver and his assistant, both employed at the local collective farm. Otik is a mentally-challenged young man who is barely able to take care of himself. Pavek is his supervisor, a cranky but essentially good-hearted fellow who is constantly exasperated by his partner's bumbling. Otik, for his part, pretty much hero-worships his burly boss, going so far as to make sure that he and Pavek are in step as they march off to work.
One day Otik's bumbling goes a little too far and he winds up causing Pavek to back the truck right into a concrete pillar at the summer house of a rich city-slicker. Pavek, fed up, tells Kalina (head of the collective farm) that after they are done with the harvest, he will no longer be Otik's supervisor/guardian. Soon after this, Kalina gets a letter from headquarters of a company based in Prague saying that Otik has been given a job and an apartment in the capital. Everyone is puzzled why the company and their executives would show such an interest in one mentally disabled country bumpkin, until they figure out the reason: Otik's quaint large house where he lives alone after inheriting it from his parents.
Other plot threads include the town doctor, Dr. Skružný, a genial fellow but an awful awful driver who keeps crashing cars; a neglected wife who cheats on her jealous and abusive husband with the collective farm's veterinarian; and Pavek's teenaged son Jarda, who develops a major crush on a lovely schoolteacher.
Tropes:
- Big Guy, Little Guy: Awkward, gangly Otik and short, barrel-shaped Pavek. The hero worship that Otik has for his friend/supervisor just makes it funnier.
- Blackmail: Turek, operating a reaper, runs over another collective farm worker while drunk. The other worker survives, as he's squashed into the soft mud instead of flattened, but operating machinery drunk could lose Turek his license to work. Dr. Skružný says that if Turek ever hits his wife again, the doctor will turn over the results of his blood-alcohol test to the authorities.
- Book Ends: Begins and ends with Otik and Pavek marching off to work in the morning.
- Brick Joke: Numerous people warn the agronomist against his habit of tossing used matches back in his matchbook. He doesn't listen, and eventually a whole box of matches goes off in his pocket and he narrowly avoids burning his wiener off.
- Call-Back: After Pavek finds out that the whole business about the job in Prague is a scam so that some Communist Party bureaucrat can get Otik's house, he goes into the city to retrieve his buddy. Otik is walking to a train when Pavek whistles to him just like he'd whistle every morning in the village when he arrived to escort Otik to work. Otik joyfully jumps into the truck and they drive off.
- Cock-a-Doodle Dawn: There's usually a rooster crowing somewhere as Otik and Pavek go off to work in the morning.
- Conversation Cut: As the doctor treats Vaclav's injury, Vaclav asks if anybody in their podunk town has ever gotten a divorce. The doctor says that some have, and the camera cuts to him as a female voice says "But how do you go about it?" It's Jana, as the scene has cut to the doctor treating her for her injury, namely the black eye that Turek gave her.
- Creator Cameo: Zdeněk Svěrák, who wrote the screenplay, has a small part as the traveling artist who comes to the village and seduces the schoolteacher.
- Distracted by the Sexy: How the concrete gate post gets knocked over. Otik, who may be a simpleton but still has a sex drive, gets distracted by the shapely bottom of the city slicker's wife as she bends over. He stops watching where the truck is going as he beckons, and Pavek plows right into the post.
- Domestic Abuse: Turek gives his wife a black eye after finding out she is cheating on him.
- Down on the Farm: Down On The Collective Farm, being a story of a sleepy Czech village organized around a collective farm, and the people who live there and support each other.
- Drives Like Crazy: Dr. Skružný keeps crashing cars. At one point he looks at his latest wreck and asks if he needs a new fender, only for Pavek to answer that there's no point unless he gets a fender made out of rubber. In another scene he manages to run over himself when he parks the car so he can get out and admire the scenery, only to forget to engage the parking brake. In the last scene he shows Pavek and Otik the nice new red car he just received, only to promptly drive it through a barn door.
- Fan Disservice: We get a good look at the pasty white butt of the agronomist, who is getting checked by the doctor after a box of matches caught fire in his pants.
- Hot Teacher: Jarda has to go to a parent-teacher conference for his younger sister because his parents can't make it. He doesn't mind going there because he has a crush on his sister's good-looking young teacher. The teacher tries to brush him off gently, but Jarda keeps pining for her to the point of almost stalking her. He's too young for her and she's not interested.
- Off-into-the-Distance Ending: The last shot is Otik and Pavek walking away, off to work again. Pavek messes with his young charge by repeatedly jumping and clicking his heels, which of course Otik does as well.
- Offscreen Crash: In the last scene Dr. Skružný shows Otik and Pavek his snazzy new red car. Pavek nods, the doctor gets in the car and drives off, and there's the immediate sound of a crash offscreen as the doctor plows through the door of a barn.
- Shameless Fanservice Girl: Jana, neglected by her awful husband Turek, goes to hang the washing in the backyard wearing bikini bottoms and a skimpy top. Jarda notices and gawks as he's walking buy, and Turek notices that, provoking another argument.
- Spurned into Suicide: Jarda has been crushing on the local hot teacher but she keeps hinting that she's not interested and starts an affair with a painter who is staying in the village. When Jarda looks through her window and sees her having sex with the artist, he makes a suicide attempt in which he swallows some pills.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: Otik the simpleton is given one beer at the beer hall with Pavek's wife's kind instructions not to drink any more. Turek the jerkass dumps a shot glass of liquor into Otik's beer mug. Luckily Pavek sees this and pours out the beer while angrily confronting Turek.
- Unscrewed Salt Shaker: A worker at the dining hall of the collective farm does this to Otik and Pavek, unscrewing the cap to the salt shaker. Otik haplessly uses the salt shaker on Pavek's food, prompting a Death Glare from Pavek after Otik dumps the whole shaker of salt into Pavek's soup.
