Les demoiselles de Wilko

Chekhovian drama of simmering but subtle sexual politics as a rural household of ladies post WWI is thrown into emotional turmoil at the reappearance after a number of years of an eligible friend and neighbour. The women, with one exception, are not young but at that touchy, tragic age when they are clinging to the last traces of their good looks. There are five of them, apparently sisters, several with failed marriages, now with nothing to do but laze around their fine country home.

The film works quite well as a study of such women, but it's really about Victor, a man in failing health and with intimations of mortality, who is on a solemn Tolstoyan quest for meaning. His emptiness is clearly linked to failed opportunities with women - they begin to suspect there is a particular reason. Walled in by his own weakness, regret, and resignation, the sudden attentions of all the women only throws him into more confusion. Comprised largely of social visits, there's a nice period atmosphere and the whole thing is understated, sombre and faintly tragic. Quite a fine film.

The male lead in this movie is handsome, accomplished, kind and well meaning, but he does not comprehend the harm he has caused his female friends (and lovers)in his country town 15 years ago. He suffers the loss of a good friend in his new surroundings and returns to his old town for comfort and rest. But he has learned nothing about his lack of understanding of the depth of love he can inspire. Even when he discovers that a previous lover had lost her life to pain, he begins again, unknowingly, to hurt a girl of a younger generation. There is not a wasted word or movement in the movie. Everything is important. I loved the movie and will buy it and watch it over and over.

This movie is a super-ten. It is as good as any Ibsen play.

I did enjoy this film - it's reflective, not too melancholy, not too taxing. It is a pleasant film.

It seems to me like this film inspired Utomlennoe Solntzem too, so that's a good enough reason to watch it as any. Like that other film, Panny z Wilco paints a convincing and pretty picture of the life of a large family and the theme of a man returning to such a place after many years to confront a romance which was left unfinished is mirrored. 'Burnt By the Sun' does owe a lot to Mikhailkov's earlier 'An Unfinished Piece for the Mechanical Piano' as well. Based on a Chekhovian play, (this film also features a scene were the mystery of a past romance is revealed to all present through the telling of a story.)

(In fact a tango is played, in Panny z Wilco, on the gramophone at one point that sounds suspiciously similar to the song of the title of that other film...)

Jola, one of the four sisters at Wilko, keeps breaking into lovely spontaneous laughter (I'm not sure why I mention this, it's just that, it seems to me, spontaneous laughter deserves a mention).

A study of post-war loss and decay is presented in poetic and atmospheric images, all in good artistic taste, but without any direct political stance.

A Man returns to the place he was grown. He meets his female friends from his "younghood" in the villa nearby, and the movie starts to solve the history of relationships between the man and those women (which are sisters).

In the film there should've been more cutting. It is nice when public has time to think during the movie and solve by themselves the history of this relationshipweb, but the scenes are too long. However some secenes are so beautiful that they are like paintings.

For my generation (i have borned in the 1980's) this movie can be too difficult to process. The matters which the movie handled, didnt touch me, and it was hard to catch the viewpoint of the characters.

Five stars out of ten.