Based on true-life events, Zelary is the WWII-era story of Eliska (Anna Geislerova), a member of the Czech resistance forced to hide in the quaint town of Zelary after she ends up on the Gestapo's hit list. To stay hidden, she enters into a marriage of convenience with a kind old lug named Joza (Gyorgy Cserhalmi) and adapts to pastoral peasant life. Think Witness with Nazis.
What starts out as promisingly suspenseful quickly winds down to a series of predictable non-events and small-town-life subplots. Eliska inevitably develops real feelings for her faux beau, who is as idyllic and without fault as the lush green hills of his picture-postcard town. Conflict tries to manifest itself in the form of the ever-present but seldom-felt Nazi threat, more attempted rapes than an episode of Oz, and a misplaced subplot about an outcast boy who's abused by his wicked stepfather, but these vignettes are like gentle waves on a sea of monotony.
The story's meandering is never really aggravating, but at two and a half hours, it feels too long. Zelary is a pleasant enough place to visit, but there would definitely have to be Nazis breathing down my neck to make me live there.