In an exciting love story located under very bad conditions, both live in a state of intense emotion. Both people may be quite different in style and tradition but live a Cold War love story in the 1950s in Poland, Paris and Berlin. That emotional story turns into a strange destiny in an impossible time and in very difficult circumstances.
Form and content seem oddly divorced, but music -- the Polish folk tunes, communist-propaganda anthems and Parisian torch songs -- sets the mood and saves the day.
Pawel Pawlikowski puts on stage what is impossible to represent: the space for love in a world divided in two, in this masterful work, powerful and reflective, about passions denied by the historical context. [Full Review in Spanish]
A passionate love story (yes, there's a recurrent theme here) that plays out, with musical accompaniment and political resonance, across three decades in postwar Europe.
Pawlikowski is compelling his two lovers on a sadistic and slightly contrived trajectory to end-gain the moral of the story which is that corrosive politics destroy lives.
This is an achingly personal story - the romantic leads are named after Pawlikowski's own parents, to whom the film is dedicated - and also a sadly resigned one.
It's got more energy and freedom than the more classically told Ida, and this can be seen in the camera movements, although occasionally it feels like the movie meanders as much as the characters do.
