Little Girl Blue

No use old girl
You may as well surrender
’Cause your hopes are getting slender
Why won’t somebody send a tender blue boy
To cheer up little girl blue
(LITTLE GIRL BLUE, LYRICS: LORENZ HART)

Proudly humanistic at a time when such fare plays against the prevailing grain of cynical hipness, writer-helmer Alice Nellis’ distinctive third feature, Little Girl Blue, strikes a pitch-perfect note of benevolent mischief as it tracks the mellow mid-life crisis of a bemused Prague housewife in an evolving city. – – Though translator Julie (dynamic Czech singer Iva Bittova) and businessman husband Richard (Karel Roden) seem comfortable enough settling into a modern Prague house, their two-decade plus marriage is also portrayed as decidedly mechanical, in a clever credit-sequence gag that sets pic’s shrewdly irreverent tone. To the strains of
Nina Simone’s 1958 title tune, the Lorenz Hart standard (reimagined around the melody of Good King Wenceslas), it’s clear Julie’s approaching a crossroads.
– EDDIE COCKRELL, VARIETY