For most of its length, Vladimír Michálek's Autumn Spring is a touching story of an elderly con man. Thanks in part to a strong, restrained lead performance from the late Vlastimil Brodský, the film manages to avoid becoming maudlin until the final third. It's one thing to make Fanda (Brodský), the impish con man, sympathetic, but Michálek and screenwriter Jirí Hubac take things a step further, turning Fanda into some kind of guardian angel sent to earth to dispense wisdom and lighten the lives of everyone he meets, with the exceptions of his spoiled grandchildren (who, unlike most human grandchildren, seem to look forward to their grandfather's death), his selfish and uncaring son, Jára (Ondrej Vetchý), and most problematically, his long-suffering wife, Emílie (Stella Zázvorková). The relatively humorless Emílie is determined to put a stop to Fanda's shenanigans, but her motives aren't very well developed. The filmmakers stack the deck and risk turning the character into a death-obsessed, penny-pinching shrew. There's never any question that she's wrong and Fanda's right, and sure enough, her crackdown on his antics has tragic consequences. Because Emílie's motivation is so broadly drawn (she's nearly villainous in her disregard for Fanda's seemingly harmless pleasure), the film's dramatic turn seems more sentimental and manipulative than it might have been, had the filmmakers attempted to make Fanda less saintly.