“I’m a lover, not a fighter / And I’m really made for speed,” Kinks frontman Ray Davies sang in at least one of the songs that shares a title with Slovak writer-director Martina Buchelová’s enormously engaging debut feature. The first half of those lyrics ring true for Andrej (Adam Kubala), the floundering 20-year-old protagonist of this generation-specific romantic comedy; the latter, not so much, as he spends much of this discursive and deliberately meandering film trying to restart a life that has stalled despite all his worst efforts. Structured as a mosaic of loosely connected and inconsistently chronological episodes, “Lover, Not a Fighter” feels rhythmically shaggy in a way that reflects the insecurities, anxieties and freedoms of Gen Z life, without patronizing its adrift characters.

A Slovak-Czech co-production that premiered to roars of laughter from local audiences in Karlovy Vary, Buchelová’s debut stands out as an unusually enjoyable winner of the festival’s Proxima competition, a showcase intended as an adventurous, discovery-oriented counterpart to the festival’s main Crystal Globe awards, and often devoted to more experimental works. With its loose construction and distinctive deadpan comic tone, “Lover, Not a Fighter” is fairly unconventional, but remains widely accessible; perhaps not every bit of their quirky Eastern European humor translates, but more than enough to become a potential word-of-mouth charmer on the festival circuit in the future.

Some of the film’s most precious affectations, particularly the long-winded titles and intertitles of the chapters, loaded with irony and incidental details, would run the risk of being irritating if they were not also funny, in keeping with the protagonist’s amusing and distracted way of expressing himself. “About Andrej, who no longer frequents tram stops, but sits in a tree and lives with his grandmother,” reads his on-screen introduction, which may be a little cute, but certainly paints a picture. Andrej, no longer a teenager but not yet ready for adulthood, is semi-estranged from his parents (who have separated and seem considerably more concerned about their new partners than their son) and given to excessive drinking; As expected, he is far from finding a direction in life.

In an attempt to save himself from himself, he moves in with his loving, good-humored but helpful and no-nonsense grandmother (Jaroslava Pokorná), and quits drinking cold turkey, though not his enduringly eccentric habit of climbing trees in public. The arrangement works well, at least until his similarly aged and adrift cousin Pet’o (František Beleš) comes up with the same idea, leading to an awkward turf war between two young men more alike than they realize in their social ineptitude.

However, these concerns become secondary when Andrej falls for the shy and cunning Miša (Michaela Kostková) and she, against all odds, sees something in his lazy, embarrassed energy. However, it’s not long before he clumsily ruins whatever they had; The resulting romantic repair job is halting, delayed further by sidebars involving Miša’s romantically naïve younger sister (Mia Sofia Arpášová) and end-of-the-world-obsessed father (Jaro Vojtek), not to mention the cousins’ gradual rapprochement.

In drawing and assembling these angry, eccentric, or unmoored characters, Buchelová’s snappy, witty script resists the kind of banal generational generalizations that are currently the exclusive domain of straight-up comedy: There’s little refreshing meme-style humor in a film that relies heavily on well-written, sometimes awkward conversation. But the film does identify something truthful and empathetic in the behavioral quirks and blind spots of a generation raised online (even Adam Mach’s agile, unpolished camerawork evokes the roving spontaneity of smartphone shots) in times of constant political, economic, and environmental pessimism, as well as those of their elders, who probably could have set a less chaotic and self-centered example in life.

What helps keep us largely on the kids’ side is a performance of great goofy physicality and friendly delivery behind the beat from Kubala, who never turns Andrej into a complete punchline, even as he watches the world through the folds of his duvet on the living room floor, watches anemic morning television, and eats canned cherries from the jar. We’ve all been that loser at some point in our lives, which makes it easy to invest in his haphazard comeback project, and his potential romance with Miša, also presented as a real, intelligent, slightly messed-up person rather than some sitcom-type Kostková.

“Lover, Not a Fighter” is not programmatic in its fantasy; Even when it is aggravating, it is humanly aggravating. “I don’t think you’re a bad person, but you’re very sad and that’s why you’re so stupid,” Pet’o tells his cousin in what passes for a tender moment between them—a statement of frank openness and compassion that’s pretty much in line with the approach of Buchelová’s strange, sweet, winning film.