In this grotesque meditation on parenthood and on the insatiable appetite of infantile digestive systems – and infantile libidos – Svankmajer updates a dark Czech folk tale to present-day Prague. When a married couple realizes they can’t have children like everyone around them, they fashion an infant out of a tree root and nurse it until it comes to amoral, ravenous life. While the story has plentiful cinematic precedents – from Frankenstein to Pinocchio to Eraserhead to It’s Alive – this film revels in Svankmajer’s patented perverse, deadpan surrealism.