Le masseur

I really found this to be a magical movie. It had a very mysterious and lyrical quality to it, and it was full of surprises. Wonderful characters, beautiful dialogue and a tad of a magical realist quality. And a peek into affluent Polish life.

A wonderful performance by Alec Utgoff, who really stole the show. I really liked this movie.

Beautiful fairytale with mesmerasing structure, story and acting. I loved especially the chernobyl thread.

Zhenia, (Alec Utgoff), is a kind of itinerant masseur who's also something of a shamen. He was born in Chernobyl seven years to the day before the accident and as a client suggests he may be radioactive. He's now plying his trade around a fancy gated estate in Poland, the kind of place where the Stepford Wives might live. There's no backstory to Zhenia other than he can hypnotise people and momentarily take over their lives, (that's how he seems to have got his work permit), and Malgorzata Szumowska and Michal Englert's wonderful film "Never Gonna Snow Again" could be a Polish 'Wizard of Oz' before Dorothy came on the scene as Zhenia makes himself at home in other people's houses, bending them to his will while simultaneously becoming a little like them for a time.

'Realism' in the conventional sense is conspicuously absent. I mean, how did Zhenia get in touch with these clients, all living within walking distance of each other in this strangely bland community? What's his purpose there and who exactly is he and why can he move a glass across a table without touching it? Teasingly these are questions Szumowska and Englert want us to ask without giving us any answers.

Naturally, it's a comedy and a rather black one though it's never particularly funny. Whimsical would be a better term. It might even remind you a little of Pasolini's "Theorem" and visually it's often quite extraordinary. That it slipped by, virtually unnoticed, even in the art-house circuit, is a shame since it is totally engaging from start to finish. Do try to see it.

There is a certain sense of strangeness throughout the film, a certain touch of fantasy that reminds us especially of Jonathan Glazer. Not many things are explained about the main character, and especially in the final section the magical elements end up absorbing the traditional narrative, but the film as a whole has a touch of fantastic cinema, of universality in its proposal, which makes it the most affordable than Malgorzata Szumowska has made to date.

A fascinating collection of quirky people, intriguing stories, social commentary and a mystery surrounding the masseur and spiritual healer Zenia (Alec Utgoff) who seems to have some special powers after surviving the Chernobyl disaster as a child. The central mystery keeps you intrigued, while the film explores the stories of the wealthy fenced-off neighbourhood (a very good Polish cast). I really liked the fairy-tale feeling of the film and the masterfully done dream-like hypnosis scenes (which looked amazing). The film doesn't feel larger than the sum of it parts though - the individual various elements work very well but in the end you don't necessarily get a satisfying pay-off to it all, it just drifts off like a dream. A worth effort from the Polish cinema.