Synopsis
The plot of LIBANKY (The Honeymoon) takes place over three days, during Radim and Tereza‘s wedding party. Secrets from the past pry into Teresa’s life during her own wedding – and the party slowly drifts into a nightmare. Tereza has already attempted to marry once; she is naturally hesitant about her current marriage. She decided to marry Radim after cautious deliberation, having lived with him for a long time. The bridegroom is a friendly fellow who treats Tereza with understanding and care. Anyone would think they wonderfully belong together…
The past suddenly breaks into the present as an optician from a neighboring town. When Radim visits his shop by chance with Dominik, his fifteen-year-old son from a first marriage, the optician behaves in an odd way. As though he was somehow familiar with Radim. Later on, he surreptitiously mixes with the guests at the wedding ceremony. Tereza believes that he is an acquaintance of Radim – but Radim denies it. On the other hand, he omits that he has seen that man while getting his son‘s glasses repaired. Tereza‘s doubts become all the stronger as the man from the optician‘s shop mixes with the guests at the ensuing wedding party.
The uninvited guest introduces himself as Jan Benda and tries to remind Radim that they are acquainted from their secondary school days. Despite his strangely incoherent story, the family accepts him and keeps him at the party… Benda casually chats with wedding guests. Although he is making growingly disturbing allusions, people take no steps to have him expelled. Renata, Tereza‘s younger sister, senses that Benda is gay and bring it to Tereza‘s attention. Running out of patience, Tereza explicitly asks Benda to leave. Benda agrees to leave but only after Tereza opens his wedding gift. Her surprise is all the greater when she finds out the gift is a bronze urn bearing the engraving „Jan Benda“ with a date of birth and a date of death… The ensuing confrontation between Benda and Radim reveals that they are acquainted and share a tormenting past. Radim takes the gatecrasher away from the party once and for all.
After Tereza and Radim‘s wedding night, early in the morning, Benda reappears at their house. Confronted by Tereza, he recounts her in private the past events that binds him to Radim. Back in the nineties, they used to attend the same boarding school. Radim and two of his classmates used to harass other pupils, one of whom was Jan Benda himself. The unknown optician had introduced himself as Benda only to remind Radim of his past guilt. A strong friendship had emerged between Jan Benda and the would-be avenger, who had also experienced harassment. That friendship evolved into love. Benda ultimately couldn‘t go on with his unbearable sufferings and committed suicide after leaving the boarding school. After completing this act of vengeance for the death of his lover, and with Tereza now broken, “Benda” hands her a love letter in which his soul mate alluded to Radim‘s role in his state of mind. He then vanishes without revealing his identity. Tereza‘s disappointment and her disheartened attitude quickly make Radim realize that something has happened. Inevitably, Tereza accuses Radim of inhumanity; the exchange degenerates into the couple‘s first extensive quarrel… The plot culminates with the sudden disappearance of Dominik, Radim‘s son, during a tour of a neighboring town with his parents, the day after the party. Among other places, the parents also look for him at the now closed optician‘s shop; the search ends at the guest house, where everyone expects Dominik to have come back alone by foot. But he isn‘t there either… Radim, participating in the search, begins to have the horrible suspicion that “Benda‘s” revenge may not be over yet. Radim and his brother-in-law Milan break into the optician‘s shop, where they find evidence of Dominik’s presence and even catch “Benda” himself. Things come to a head, an interrogation takes place. Radim and Milan come to the very brink of murder. At the end, however, a lucky coincidence reveals that with Dominik it‘s all a little different…