33 scènes de la vie

Though not a rich country as such, Poland abounds with ideas and inspiration. Think Copernicus, Curie, Chopin. Maybe that's too high a bar for anyone, but writer-director Malgorzata Szumowska and her team don't even qualify. The plot of "33 Scenes" is dramatic enough: Julia loses her mother, her father, and her high-flying career prospects all over the course of what seems like a few weeks. But the more drama she takes on, the less you care. Is it because it's hard to sympathize with a spoiled brat in the first place? Or is it because the movie takes forever to get to the point? My inclination is to blame it on dubbing director Mina Kindl, who was in charge of the German version I have seen. The voice-over is entirely lifeless (and partly out of sync), especially Julia's. It sounds like it was recorded in a basement studio, with the actors reading from the original script, without even looking at the screen. There simply is no connection between image and sound. I sat through it, but it felt like watching a silent film and listening to an unrelated talking book in parallel. I'm wondering what the Polish version is like. As it stands, avoid.

Worst movie I have ever seen in my entire life!!! In almost every scene someone was smoking, which honestly doesnt bring anything to the movie and if a director doesnt know another way to express the feelings of a character other than by lighting a cigarette he should reconsider his profession. Its pretty obvious that the director himself is a chain smoker. Apart from that, the movie is so confusing, with no clear scenes and a lack of a real story and storyline. There are countless scenes where there appears a black screen for several seconds - which seems like an eternity - for no reason at all. The whole movie started and ended abrupt and leaves the viewers confused. The whole movie is characterized by bad lightning, dramatic scenes and sadness, shaken pictures. I wish I could get back the time I spent watching this movie. Total waste of time.

I'll try not to spoil anyone's fun here, so I'll stick to the well-established facts and not disclose more than is generally known about the film already. Julka (Julia Jentsch) seemingly has it all. She is a well established young artist, she has a devoted friend, Adrian, to help her with her work, and a loving husband (Maciej Stuhr), who leaves her only with the wish that they might finally live together and not divided by their disparate vocations (Julka works in plastic arts, her husband is a composer and they spend most of their times in different countries - her in Poland, him in Germany). Yet one day, out of the blue, Julka's family faces shocking news - her mother, an acknowledged writer, has cancer. As her condition grows worse, so does Julka's connection to the family - suddenly, her cozy world begins to change. What will come out of it all? Szumowska's movie, based on her own experiences of which you may probably learn from other sources, was well received by the Polish critics, some of whom even went as far as to claim it an artistic masterpiece. A vast majority, however, seem to have misread the work; while personal tragedies are no doubt the main source of the depicted events, what the whole movie is about is not losing one's relatives and trying to cope with it, but rather losing one's world and trying to get back to it. I won't tell you if the movie ends well, but I can say that Julka's troubles are definitely infantile, at times even terrifyingly uninvolving. I didn't enjoy Jentsch's performance, but I couldn't really say if it's her own inability or Szumowska's own direction that led her to become so bland. Anyway, the movie ain't bad, but it has its drawbacks - like the fact that it seems to end somewhere in the middle, with no grand resolution, explicit or implicit. Be cautious. You were warned.