KARLOVY VARY, Czech Republic – This posh, historic spa town, 100 miles west of Prague, is home to one of Europe’s oldest film festivals.
A once obscure, Communist-era gathering for filmmakers from the former Soviet bloc, the festival now dreams of joining the same league as Cannes, Berlin and Venice.
And the best way to do this, Karlovy Vary has learned, is to bring in celebrities.
This year’s edition, the 36th, was the most star-studded yet, featuring Nastassja Kinski, Ben Kingsley, Julian Sands, Emir Kusturica, Ivan Reitman, Joe Pantoliano, Terry Zwigoff, Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, Miranda Otto and others. (Michael Caine was a last-minute dropout.)
* The 42-year-old Kinski added glitter to the opening-night festivities, driven in a horse-drawn carriage to the screening of “An American Rhapsody,” directed by Eva Gardos.
Kinski portrays a woman who flees Hungary for the United States during the Cold War, and Johansson is the daughter she is forced to leave behind.
Despite all the publicity, the tearjerker, which opens in New York on Aug. 10, failed to impress critics, who found it better suited to TV than to an international film festival.
* The diminutive Kingsley pleased the black-tie, closing-night audience by suddenly ditching his jacket and standing on his bald head before receiving an award for “outstanding artistic achievement.”
“That just goes to prove that I will do anything for a Czech friend. Anything,” Kingsley explained, cryptically.
At a party afterward, the actor nixed the VIP room to stand on line with the hungry masses eager to fill their plates with barbecued treats.
Earlier, he talked about his movie “Sexy Beast,” in which he plays a vicious London mobster.
Kingsley admitted he enjoys such roles.
“I like playing violent or angry people. It’s a side of humanity that we very seldom get an opportunity to visit,” he said.
“Audiences enjoy very much watching a villain operate on the screen. I get similar excitement playing that character.”
* One of the festival’s hottest tickets was “Don’s Plumb,” the 1995 American indie directed by R.D. Robb and featuring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire.
Following the success of “Titanic,” DiCaprio and Maguire successfully sued to prevent “Don’s Plumb” from being screened in the United States. It can, however, be shown anywhere else.
The then-unknown actors spend most of the black-and-white flick hitting on women and talking about sex. We don’t know what DiCaprio is worried about – his performance in “Don’s Plumb” is no sillier than his turn in “Titanic.”
* “This film shows my disgust with modern American culture,” director Zwigoff said in introducing the comic-book-inspired “Ghost World,” which stars Birch, Johansson and Steve Buscemi.
Indeed, Zwigoff gets in some pointed digs at life in the United States (his sendup of a Blockbuster-like video store brought joy to Cine File’s heart), and Birch is grand as zany teenager Enid.
But the movie has narrative problems and fails to take advantage of some interesting plot turns.
* Of the 17 movies in competition, Cine File was most impressed by Polish helmer Robert Glinski’s “Hi, Tereska,” which took the festival’s runner-up prize.
Glinski apologized that Aleksandra Gietner and Karolina Sobczar, the two young women who star in the disturbing black-and-white portrait of troubled teenagers, could not make it to the festival. One was in jail for a series of robberies and the other was on the lam after escaping.
In fact, the girls, who had never acted before, were in reform school when Glinski picked them for the film. Their performances are nothing less than brilliant.
At least one U.S. distributor is reportedly interested in “Hi, Tereska.”
V.A. Musetto is filmeditor of The Post. He canbe e-mailed atvam@nypost.com.