As she demonstrated in her award-winning shorts and her first feature, The Shoe(1998), Latvian filmmaker Laila Pakalnina has a distinctive approach. Her new film, which is her first in color, is a minimalist production that she describes as "an absurd drama." Audiences open to fresh approaches and experimental cinema will find the rewards are plentiful. The formidable headmistress of a post-Soviet school discovers that someone has defecated in the school attic. Like Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny, she′s determined to get to the bottom of what she sees as a personal affront. Her solution: she supplies each child with a matchbox and demands they use the receptacles to provide samples of their feces for comparison. While all this is going on, the school photographer arrives accompanied by a small menagerie consisting of a beaver, a python and a monkey wearing a bright red dress. When the python escapes somewhere on the premises, the fire brigade is called in. Although it may be seen as a parable of a totalitarian society, it is probably best enjoyed as a serene and witty examination of the human condition.