United States of Love

Given the distinctive quality of Polish cinema, we don't see enough Polish movies in Australia, and I was happy to catch a one-night stand, as it were, from this one.

Intelligent, well cast, beautifully shot, church-ridden, grey, and typically unsettling. As Polish as anything, this is definitely not a date and popcorn movie. Even the first and 'happiest' dinner party scene is shot in washed out blues and greens. From there on, all four female protagonists are bound for sexual grief, although the lesbian character does win a weird kind of satisfaction at the end.

I'd go see this director's next outing, and I wouldn't mind seeing his previous. For me, his observations are vigorous, expanding to give comment on life as we live it, and not just dispensing gloom for the sake of gloom. The gratuitous moments - like Madame Principal's rough-trade encounter with a former student - can be overlooked.

Astonishingly mature work written and directed by the young Polish director Tomasz Wasilewski. It's stuffed full of amazing images and superb performances.

The individual, overlapping stories of four women in a quiet town are presented in compelling scenes in which it's impossible to anticipate what will happen next. Meanwhile, in the wider world, discussions are taking place about the unification of Germany, the nail in the coffin of Eastern European Communism, which had effectively collapsed the year before, liberating Poland from what had been the Soviet Union. The counterpointing of these private and public themes is brilliantly accomplished by Wasilewski, who has blossomed as an artist with this film.

The quartet of actresses are Julia Kijowska,Magdalena Cielecka, Dorota Kolak and Marta Nieradkiewicz, with Ms Kolak particularly moving as a bewildered teacher thrown on the scrapheap. There is strong support by an equally accomplished quartet of men: Tomasz Tyndyk, Andrzej Chyra, Marcin Czarnik and Lukasz Simlat.

This film played one night during the Making Waves 2016 film series at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville NY. It is the story of four women's relationship with the men in their lives after the fall of communism in 1990. The film is beautifully written and the production is excellent. Once you look beyond an individual female character's immediate actions, you are confused as to what really motivates them. Yes, it makes sense that you mope because the handsome man does not respond. But why would you be attracted to this particular man in the first place etc. I was at a Q&A with the actress who played Agata. A woman in the audience asked what motivated her character and Ms Kijowska answered that she struggled with it. Then she fell back on the easy excuse that the lack of freedom to make bad choices in communism created this tension and frustration. I think it is because the writer and director is a man and it is a kind of male fantasy of power and control. For me one of the most powerful portraits of male cruelty reminiscent of the black and white continental films of the 20's and 30's occurred in a scene in Iza's apartment involving an open window. I may never forget it. Of course the consequences were devastating and Iza will pay. All of the women pay.

Never in my life has any film made me regret buying the ticket. Wasilewski's movie is so badly executed the visit in the cinema is an excruciating experience. There is no script (how come did it get an award in Berlin? it doesn't make any sense), the cinematography sucks (what happened to the colors?), the direction is terrible (Wasilewski can't make use of terrific cast - they all seem lost in this story) and the score is non-existent. I will not mention intentional and over the top nudity (I don't mind nudity, but the number of penis and vagina shots is inexplicable taking into consideration movie's theme) and a final scene, which sums up my experience in the cinema. That puking woman (that's not really a spoiler - the scene doesn't fit the movie whatsoever) is like the director puking on the audience. Definitely not recommended.

The life stories in 'United States of Love' (the original title is 'Zjednoczone stany milosci'), the 2016 film by Polish director and screenwriter Tomasz Wasilewski take place in 1990. That was the first year of freedom in Eastern Europe after 50 of years of wars and totalitarian communist dictatorships, and the four not so young women who are the heroines of the film enjoy for the first time a personal freedom with which they do not exactly know what to do with. Each of them lives an impossible love story, and none of them manages to find solutions to turn their dreams and desires into reality. Are these individual stalemates or the crisis of a generation that has led to change but no longer has the power or skills to use this change in their own private lives? Tomasz Wasilewski's film addresses a recurring theme in Eastern European cinema after 1989, the original flavor of his script (awarded a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival) being the fact that his heroines are all women. The film has an explicitly feminist perspective, although it is written and directed by a man. Hence some of the qualities of the film but also some of its problems.

What I liked. The cinematography of Oleg Mutu, creator of the visual style of the films of directors such as Cristian Mungiu, envelops the whole film in an atmosphere of standardized geometric gray, in which the colors and feelings of the characters struggle to be perceived. The structure of the film is symmetrical, four life stories of four women, with an exceptional scene in the middle of the film, which those who will see it will not forget for a long time, neither aesthetically nor emotionally. The changes that take place around are hinted at by fragments of news from that fractal year in the history of Poland and Eastern Europe which was 1990. The narrative structure is non-linear, consisting of several time loops that together compose the film's message. The acting interpretations, especially of the four main characters are very good, within the limits of the conception and the directorial indications.

What I liked less. The directorial approach is cold and the four stories are repeated in similar terms and attitudes. The result is more routine than emotional amplification. We can understand the lack of communication and emotional paralysis of one or the other of the heroines, but all four act similarly and assume in an illogical way the wrong decisions, sometimes with tragic consequences. I'm far from an opponent of nudity on screen, but in this case the use of nudity seemed excessive to me. Each of the four heroines is exposed nude several times, and perhaps just in a third of them nudity would be justified. I assume that the director wanted to express in this way the feelings of liberation experienced by the heroines, as well as their internal tensions and vulnerabilities in the unhappy relationships they live. But I doubt the film would have looked the same if it had been directed by a woman. The heroines of 'United States of Love' enjoy very little love if at all. Freedom does not bring them happiness. The first thing to learn or re-learn after liberation is to live and decide what to do with your own life.