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Twists of Fate ("Korowód")

PARSLEY'S COMMLOCK

Film Review : Twists of Fate ("Korowód")
Went to see this opening film in 'Kinoteka' (www.kinoteka.org.uk), the 6th Polish film festival held at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith. As we Brits tend to only be aware of Polish handyman skills, this festival (which runs till 30th May) seeks to provide a more balanced cultural view.

Director/writer Jerzy Stuhr is well known as an actor and director in Poland, and he is also a professor at the drama school from where he found the novices who star in this film. The film stars Kamil Mackowiak as Bartek Wilkosz, a college student who is making money from writing pieces and taking photos for tabloid newspapers. When he sniffs a story, in the form of a man sitting opposite him in a train, he forgets about school and follows him across country, with the help of his friend's sister.

At first his amorality is quite engaging, and fulfilled my stereotype ideas of foreign films involving behaviour I can't quite get my head round (I guess most of the ones I would have seen will have been French). The music was sparse and classical and not at all Hollywood.

I also realised that I had assumed that people in Poland must live in poverty to think that the UK is worth moving to, but the Poland of the film could have been just about any European country I'm familiar with. The only hint of poverty was when he tries to get a hotel room without a bath to save money, but even at that point his request is found slightly strange and humorous.

The film was doing quite well with me, as it drew the parallels between the generations of old and young Polish people. The old, we learned, may have been reporting each other to the Communist leaders or protesting against the Communist regime. The young, in this example, are now reporting for sensationalist media. To my mind, obsessed as I am with cold war spy dramas, the previous struggles seemed much more noble and worth thinking about than today's petty hedonism.

Unfortunately, I felt the film started to get a little 'unstuck' with what I felt were some rather unconvincing character transformations, and some almost 'romantic comedy' twists in the plot. I guess I would have been happier if the film had stayed in the gritty and occasionally exciting zone, rather than feeling it was ok to launch straight into love affairs and comic twists.

I was left wondering whether the film's later stages were one of three things: Firstly they could have been a 'Polish' perspective that felt strange to me (in the same way that some French films can feel like they are 'meandering'). Secondly they may have just been clunky filmmaking. Thirdly, they may have been some Jerzy Stuhr trademark combination of plot and sub-plot that is his style, in the same way Richard Curtis films are recognisable. There was definitely enough goodwill and popularity for Stuhr that I felt my understanding may have been at fault.

Amazingly there was a question and answer session afterwards featuring the 2 main actresses in the film. I asked them if the UK audience would be missing Polish references. Their answer was about the betraying of protesters and unfortunately missed the point of my question. They also embarrassed me because they insisted on holding the only microphone themselves, and not offering it to the translator who was trying to pass on their words to the English audience. I didn't feel that the themes were alien to a UK audience, who know all about paparazzi behaviour, and are encouraged to snitch on benefit fraudsters and view each other with terrorism paranoia.

Aside from experiencing a slightly disarming self-centredness from the 2 actresses, we also learned that the daughter of an ex-President was the celebrity that Wilkosz spots on a train, and that a flirty lorry driver was a famous actor in Russia.

In the pleasant 'art house' atmosphere of the Riverside Studios, I found myself cringing at the 'too clever by half' questions from the audience that seemed to want to force gravitas and meaning into the plot where there was none. For instance I couldn't believe there was something intrinsic about the Polish psyche that was manifesting itself as snitching on protestors in old times, and snitching on celebrities now.

Stuhr himself appears in the film, as does his son. There was obviously quite a 'cult' of Stuhr going on amongst the audience. Karolina Gorczyca, who played Wilkosz's girlfriend, said she couldn't understand why her character would have stayed with a man who was such an obvious liar. Everyone seemed very interested by Stuhr's answer that 'there were women like that'. Given that we hear partners who are physically abused often stay with their abuser, it hardly seemed like a bombshell that they would stay with a liar.

I was left wondering if every country's films live in a walled cultural ghetto when they dare to be in a native language.
Overall review : thumbs lightly up. As good as anything we're going to see that is in English, and great first half, but a bit confused in narrative towards the end to my English mind.

parsley@gardenrecords.com [www.gardenrecords.com]

++ submitted by Parsley ++

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