“Up and Down” therefore is disjointed, although some of the characters come together in different ways. The central family undergoing stress includes a wife whose much older husband is discovered to have a brain tumor and require surgery, the professor’s bitter ex-wife who resents his marriage to the younger, more attractive woman, and the professor’s son with his former wife. The son had an affair with the woman who was to become his stepmother when she chose the father for her husband instead of the youth. Complicated?

Most interesting is the role of the son, Martin, played by Petr Forman, in real life the son of renowned Czech director Milos Forman, who was a major force in the revitalization of Czech films in the 1960s. The younger Forman is quite handsome in a rough-hewn way and suited to playing the rebellious Martin, who has moved to Australia where he has a happy life with a wife and child. He returns to Prague to visit his ailing father, as well as his complaining, resentful mother.

There is comic relief provided by bumbling thieves who masquerade behind a pawn shop, as well as comedy with underlying sadness involving a woman so desperate for a baby that she wants to kidnap one, and her dunce of a soccer-loving husband with a jail record who cannot find a job he can hold. All of these roles have been well cast.