Cold War (2018)

The Time Magazine described Pawel Pawlikowski latest movie as ‘A Terrific Smoky-Cool Love Story’, which to my mind sums up a rather splendidly enjoyable black and white Polish/French movie. Cold War is a love story set against the backdrop of Europe following World War 2 that begins in 1949 and carries on until the 1960’s.

Wiktor (Tomas Kot) first meets the attractive and rebellious Zula  (Joanna Kulig who had previously appeared in two of Pawel Pawlikowski films 2011’s The Woman in the Fifth and the award winning 2013 movie Ida) when he and his assistant (Agatha Kulesza who appeared as Wanda Gruz in Ida) tour Poland collecting and recording authentic folk music and auditioning young dancers and singers to form a theatrical group to perform in the countries that form the mighty Soviet Union. Zula and Wiktor form an immediate attachment before falling obsessively in love and escaping to Paris.

The movie earned the Polish director the Best Director Award at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival along side five awards at the European Film Awards including Best Actress for Joanna Kulig. If like me you have enjoyed Pawlikowshi’s last four movies his latest offering will not disappoint.

Ida.

For his latest film Pawel Pawlikowski returns to his native Poland for what is probably his most powerful film to date Ida (2013), following two English language films Last Resort (2000) and My Summer of Love (2004) and the predominantly French language film which stared Kristin Scott Thomas The Woman in the Fifth (2012).

As far as Anna knows she has no family, having been brought up in a convent. Called into the Mother Superiors office she is told that a living relative has come forward and before she takes her final vows she should go and meet the women. Her dead mothers sister Wanda is a good-looking middle-aged lady with no family of her own. She was employed as a judge in political trials during the Soviet Stalin regime, which gave her power over life and death. She is now a very bitter woman, a heavy smoker with a drink habit that borders alcoholism. Her causal sex life consists of one-night stands. Into this life steps the young novitiate nun who has never been out of the close confines of the Catholic convent.  But it's the secrets that date back to the time of the Second World War that her aunt has too impart that's shocks Anna, learning that even her name is not her own, originally being given the name Ida!

 

Is Anna, the novitiate nun, ready to take her vows? 

Her sadly beautiful Aunt imparts secrets that could change her life forever! 

This intimate road trip into the secrets of the past is beautifully composed in black and white by Ryszard Lenczewski who has worked with the director on his previous body of work. His scenes are 'bottom weighted', by that I mean that although a scene would fill the square frame format, the characters heads and shoulders would appear at the bottom, said by the director to give them ‘grounding’.

 

Family relationships are not always easy.

Filmed in the Lodzkie district of Poland and set in the early 1960's, it paints the urban landscape as a bleak, cold and austere place, a place that has never come to terms with the devastation brought on by the war. Newcomer Agata Trzebuchowska intimately plays the role of Anna/Ida, with the great Polish actress Agata Kuleska playing her aunt, who if your are a regular at the EIFF would have seen her in two great movies Roza (2011) and Traffic Department (2013),

 

This Polish road movie asks questions of us all!

This cheerless but ‘masterful evocation of intimate dilemmas and the weight of history’[1] raises many questions about the fundamental meaning of life! It goes some way to give us an incite in to the relationship between the Catholic Poles and the Jews, it makes us question our belief in the decency of mankind, who are saints and who are the sinners? In Ida’s case will she be tempted not to take her vows avoiding a closed life of worship. Is there more to life than sin and happy families? If like many other Polish films this will probably not get a wide release, which is a great shame.

---

[1] GFF 2014 programme notes.

The Woman in the Fifth.

Tom meets the elegantly beautiful Margit Kadar.

Based on a book by American novelist Douglas Kennedy, who also wrote the novel the French film The Big Picture (2010) was based upon, The Woman in the Fifth (2012) relates a story of a beleaguered American professor who falls in love with a strange women who isn’t quite the person she seems.  The film stars Ethan Hawke as Tom Ricks a University Professor who travels to Paris to see his estranged daughter. 6-year-old Chloe is living with her French mother who has taken out a restraining order to stop Ricks from associating with them. On arrival in France he is mugged and loses both his luggage and his wallet, which forces him to take a room in a run down lodging house and accept work as a bizarre night guard for the low life landlord Sezer who owns the seedy Hotel. Movie Ramble favourite Kristin Scott Thomas plays Margit Kadar who Tom meets at a literary evening and with whom he starts a passionate affair but is only allowed to meet her at specific times! When Tom needs her to give him an alibi in connection with a murder the local police think he’s involved with, he discovers some rather unnerving facts about this elegant, mysterious Hungarian widow.

6 year old Chloe uses the same optician as her Dad!

Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski  (Last Resort 2000, My Summer of Love 2004) this menacing psychological thriller is a rather strange intriguing movie with an inconclusive ending?  Although it’s quite enjoyable with some credible acting, it does leave viewer with an awful lot of unanswered questions, perhaps another viewing would help!

Last Resort

Tanya, Artiom and Alfie.

Following last weeks Love Film disaster Amer (2009) this weeks was back on track. Following his debut film for Shane Meadows Room for Romeo Brass (1999) Paddy Considine appeared in Last Resort (2000), which proved to be the first of two films for Polish born director Pawel Pawlikowski, the second was My Summer of Love (2004) which explored the relationship between two young women from different classes and backgrounds Considine played working class Mona’s (Natalie Press) brother who became a born again Christian while serving a prison term. The film also starred Emily Blunt as the upper middle class Tamsin and went on to win the Alexandra Korda Award for Best British Film at the BAFTA’s.

In Last Resort twenty something Tanya (Dina Korzun) arrives from Moscow with her 10 year-old son Artiom (Artiom Strelnikov) expecting to be met by her English fiancé to start a new life. When he does not turn up they claim political asylum and are confined to a holding area called Stonehaven, a bleak seaside resort, while the authorities consider their fate. Meanwhile Artyom strikes up a friendship with the manager of a local amusement arcade Alfie (Considine) who also gets cheap cigarettes and phone cards for the immigrants. Tanya, attempting to raise money to escape to confines of Stonehaven, gets a job making titillating movies for a local porn king played be the real life pornographer known as Ben Dover. She soon realises that this employment is not for her. To make matters even more complicated a loving relationship gradually develops between Tanya and Alfie.

Pawlikowski film is much more than a sad love story that’s destined to go nowhere. It deals with the thorny issue of asylum in Britain from the migrants prospective. The rather unwelcome look of a midwinter seaside resort, the grey sky and the grey cold looking sea emphasise the hopelessness of the migrant’s situation. Filmed in Margate in the winter months the movie was not originally intended for a theatrical release and was shown on TV but did get a limited run in a small amount of art-house cinemas. All three main leads greatly enhance the enjoyment of the story by making their characters totally believable. Another British movie I would highly recommend for those that enjoy uncompromising realism.