Tag: poland

Mother’s Day (2023)

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★★★½
“Everybody has issues.”

I’d be the first to admit, those issues likely extend beyond the characters in the movie, and probably extend to the script writers, because there are certainly… well, let’s just say, some novel concepts here. The heroine is Nina Nowak (Grochowska), a former Special Ops soldier, who had to fake her own death and give her son Maks up to adoption, for both their security. She’s been keeping an eye on Maks (Delikta) from afar, but after he’s abducted at the request of a gangster Nina took down, she needs to become considerably more hands-on. Rescuing Maks, however, will bring her into contact with a number of rather odd  people, on both sides of the law.

In particular, there’s Igor (Delikta), her contact inside the establishment, who is divorced, and has a fragile relationship with his daughter that he desperately wants to repair. On the other side is the very strange Woltomierz (Wróblewski), a gangster who keeps the severed head of his father in a jar on his mantelpiece, and is known as “Volto” for his habit of tazing incompetent henchmen to death. Getting, and keeping, Maks out of his grasp is going to be a challenge for Nina. Although her bad-ass credentials are firmly established after she takes on a group of men outside a convenience store, armed with nothing more lethal than a six-pack of beer. Nina literally knocks one of them out of his shoes.

This is not to be confused with any of the other similarly titled films, not least the 2010 movie starring Rebecca de Mornay. Nor should it be confused with another recently released Netflix movie about a mother with special skills, looking for her abducted child, The Mother, starring Jennifer Lopez. With that said, the look and feel of this is impressive, the fight scenes in particular being well-staged and imaginative – though fair warning, do not expect realism. or anything approaching it. I’m unaware of Grochowska having any particular action background, yet she still delivers on that front.  Most notably, she stabs someone in the head with a pair of carrots: I’ve not seen that since the equally bonkers Clive Owen movie, Shoot ‘Em Up.

The whole film is lit in a sickly green palette, which does a great job of making the city in which it takes place, look like a terrible place to live. Less successful are the attempts at drama. The Nina/Maks relationship is flat and unconvincing, and the rest of the cast largely seem to be weird for weirdness’s sake. They’re not as interesting as the makers think they are. The best way to look at this is perhaps as a female-fronted version of Crank: a deliberately excessive action flick, clearly not intended to be taken seriously. As such, I think it is a better effort than Jolt, another Netflix movie which seemed to be aiming along similar lines. The ending hints at a sequel and, truth be told, I wouldn’t mind one.

Dir: Mateusz Rakowicz
Star: Agnieszka Grochowska, Adrian Delikta, Dariusz Chojnacki, Szymon Wróblewski

Offside (2019)

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★½
“As dull as a 0-0 draw.”

Football is known as “The beautiful game,” but you wouldn’t know it based on this documentary, which seems perversely intended to remove anything like that from its topic. It focuses on Olimpia Szczecin, a women’s soccer team in Poland, as they prepare for the coming season. There’s your first problem. Team sports like this are inherently about conflict: there are winners and losers, but these are not determined on the practice field, and that’s where the film spends the bulk of its time. It’s simply not very interesting, unless you have a thing for watching women amble around a park, kicking balls at each other, jumping over low hurdles or being yelled at by their coach (Baginska).

There’s simply no narrative here which can attract interest. There are any number of threads which could have been used, if the film had bothered to explore or even explain them. For example, you’re never told – I had to Google this – that these players are actually amateurs rather than pros, so there’s the potential issue of striking a balance between their day jobs and their passion. Though we never see much “passion”. The only time the film reaches any genuine enthusiasm is when we see a coaching session for young girls, about the only ones in the entire documentary, who appear to be enjoying themselves. The coach also speaks about the importance of dealing with her players’ personal problems and keeping them off the pitch. Yet we never see this happening in any meaningful way.

A football season is inherently dramatic, fortunes ebbing and flowing over the course of meaningful competitive games. Yet this peters out before the campaign begins, robbing us of that tension. The entire season is instead described in a short series of terse captions. What little footage of actual play we see, is disjointed and impossible to get excited about. For example, they reach the final of an indoor tournament, where we’re told they are wearing white shirts, while their opponents are in blue. Except, the entire film is, for no good reason, shot in black-and-white and consequently, you can’t tell which side is which.

Outside of Baginska yelling at people, there’s no sense of any of the players having personalities or lives off the pitch. Why do they play? What are their goals? [Pun not intended] The film seems supremely disinterested in… Well, anything, to be quite honest. Rather than turning up with a story to tell, or even looking to find one, it feels as if they simply showed up for eight weeks in the off-season, due to an error in scheduling, but shrugged and made their film anyway. The irony is that, certainly in the UK, the women’s game has never been bigger, thanks largely to the English team winning the 2022 European Championships. If you told me this film was made by some American dude, to prove the validity of his belief that soccer is the dullest sport on Earth, I would believe you.

Dir: Miguel Gaudêncio
Star: Natalia Baginska, Roksana Ratajczyk, Kinga Szymanska, Weronika Szymaszek

Spoor

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★★★
“Call of the wild”

Janina Duszejko (Mandat) is a former engineer, who now lives in a small rural Polish town. She has a deep love of nature and animals. This is a belief not shared by many of the local population, who treat animals as a resource, put there for their benefit – an attitude which brings them into conflict with Duszejko. After her two dogs disappear, she goes to the authorities, but they blow her off. However, the man she suspects most, turns up dead – just the first in a series of mysterious deaths, that may be related to Jaroslav Wnetzak, a local businessman with a finger in a number of shady pies. Subsequent corpses include the police chief, who owes Wnetzak money.

With the help of Dyzio (Gierszal), an IT consultant working for the police, Duszejko is able to investigate things. She also begins a romantic relationship with visiting Czech entomologist Boros Schneider (Krobot), after he discovers Wnetzak’s body in the forest, months after the businessman had disappeared. Things come to a head when Duszejko is arrested following the death of the mayor, having been the last to have seen him alive. But what exactly is going on? Is this those shady business dealings gone wrong? Or are the animals taking revenge on those who have hunted them? While I can’t say much more, you can probably get some kind of hint to the situation, simply from the fact that it’s being reviewed here. And perhaps the poster.

Holland is a veteran director, with over 40 years of features in her native Poland, plus episodes of US shows including The Wire, The Killing and House of Cards. You can tell, since this is confident and assured, as well as providing some truly beautiful and atmospheric shots of the countryside, imbuing it with a mystical quality. Animals loom out of the mist, almost like prehistoric creatures [hey, wild boar were driven extinct in Britain during the 1600’s], and the humans may not be that much more evolved. The lines are deliberately blurred at a couple of points, such as in Wnetzak’s brothel, where the women are dressed as cats, bunnies, etc. or at a costume ball which Duszejko attends as the big, bad wolf.

She makes an interesting character: clearly smart, yet her fierce devotion is certainly a weakness, and perhaps her undoing, especially when the police, etc. blow her concerns off.  However, at 128 minutes, there feels too much slack. The subplot involving the entomologist in particular, seems to bring things lurching to a halt in the middle, just when the mysterious deaths ramp up, and should begin driving things forward. I’d have moved this element towards the beginning, part of establishing Duszejko’s character. It doesn’t serve any essential part in the main plot, requiring it to be in the position where it takes place. However, the majority of the film still works, and represents a thought-provoking and well-crafted entity for the majority of its length, that does a decent job of mixing in its message.

Dir: Agnieszka Holland
Star: Agnieszka Mandat, Patricia Volny, Jakub Gierszał, Miroslav Krobot

Women of Mafia 2

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★★★½
“Poles apart, once more.”

I was enormously surprised to see this one pop up on Netflix – it’s not as if the first movie is available on the platform (at least, not in the US), which you would expect to limit the market for the sequel. Perhaps it’s tied into the director’s recent, impressive feature, The Plagues of Breslau having been bought by the streaming service, and packaged as a Netflix original? This isn’t quite at the same level. Parts of it are awesome, alternating between hysterically funny and savagely brutal, in a way that feels like a Polish version of a Guy Ritchie film. But there are too many disparate stories here: I could fill the rest of the standard 500 words of length with the various synopses. And this leaves the good ones feeling a bit under-developed, while the less interesting ones – though never boring – come across more as a distraction.

To be honest, I don’t remember many of the details of its predecessor, but that shouldn’t impact viewers here too much. The main new character is actually Colombian. Aida (Cepeda) is involved in a deal for a ton of coke with the Poles under Daria (Dygant), that goes badly wrong. Aida ends up in Poland on a mission to find and punish those responsible. There’s also Stella (Grabowska), the mobster’s daughter who takes a dislike to Aida after she hooks up with her father. Tangentially, we have the glory of the scatterbrained Anna (Warnke), who starts off in prison, but ends up becoming a best-selling author, via a stint as a checkout girl. She’s the best character here, even though I can see how she might be highly irritating to some viewers. Finally, there’s Siekiera, who is in North Africa, and ends up getting radicalized, to become a suicide bomber back in Poland.

Did I miss anyone? Probably. As the above suggests, there are about five different films here, of wildly varying tone and content, all fighting for dominance. They don’t always mesh well, yet the style does help make it less jarring than it could be: it does feel like they all take part in the same universe. As the poster suggests, there’s no shortage of violence on view here, and much like Plagues, this is not for the squeamish. In particular, there is enthusiastic wielding of chainsaws, not leas by Aida. But there’s also a brutal interrogation sequence, which is capped off with a file being used on the victim’s teeth. You won’t be laughing at the end of that. And neither will he.

The promise at the end if that the Women of Mafia will return, and for one, I would not mind. However, it feels like Vega has so many stories he wants to tell, that the extended canvas offered by a television series might be a better way to give them the room they both need and deserve, in order to blossom. At least, give Anna her own show. That, I would certainly watch.

Dir: Patryk Vega
Star: Angie Cepeda, Agnieszka Dygant, Aleksandra Grabowska, Katarzyna Warnke

The Plagues of Breslau

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★★★★
“Siedem”

The above is the Polish for “seven”, and in the first half-hour, you’ll be forgiven for thinking that’s what you’re watching: a Polish knock-off of David Fincher’s Se7en. Homicide cop Helena Rus (Kożuchowska) is struggling to come to terms with life, after her boyfriend is killed by a drunk-driver and, for political reasons, the criminal is allowed to go free. A welcome distraction comes in the shape of a series of ritualistic murders: every day at 6 pm, a body turns up on the streets of Wroclaw. The victims have been killed in strange and unusual ways – the first, for example, is sewn inside a cow-hide, which shrinks as it dries, crushing the victim to death. Each has a word branded into their flesh, such as “Degenerate”.

To help her, a profiler is sent from the capital, Warsaw: the equally brusque Magda Drewniak (Widawska), who quickly identifies that the perpetrator is replicating the titular incidents – Wroclaw was previously known as Breslau. In those, the ruler cleaned up town by selecting a criminal each day for gruesome public execution. So far, so Se7en. But just as we were settling in comfortably, the film hurls an absolute doozy of a twist at the viewer, and from then on, all bets are off. It becomes less of a whodunnit, and more a whydunnit, with the killer having a very specific agenda, which might be considerably closer to Helena than is comfortable for her.

Director Vega was previously seen here with Pitbull: Tough Women and Women of Mafia, but has stepped up his game a notch with this. Not least, in the spectacularly grisly nature of proceedings, with some disturbingly realistic deaths and corpses: you will need a strong stomach for a number of moments. However, both Helena and Magda make for excellent characters. The former is perpetually soft-spoken, yet takes absolutely no shit from anyone, despite possessing arguably the worst hair-cut in cinema history. And Magda’s impeccable knowledge of subjects from Polish history to coma recovery, makes her a force to be reckoned with as well. However, they’re facing a killer who is always one step ahead of them, and whose plan will come right into police headquarters.

It ends up being a little Se7en and a little Dragon Tattoo, yet has more than enough of its own style and content to stand on its own terms. It does perhaps stretch belief in some of the elements: a couple of the killings feel like they would require a road-crew to assemble, rather than being the work of a single person. However, in Helena Rus, we’ve got one of the most uncompromising heroines to come out of the European noir scene, and I’d love to see more of her cases in future – even if the ending makes that… somewhat uncertain, shall we say. Just be prepared for a film which is short on genuinely likable characters, and long on carnage. In particular, I recommend having a shot of vodka at hand for the guillotine scene.

Dir: Patryk Vega
Star: Małgorzata Kożuchowska, Daria Widawska, Tomasz Oświeciński, Maria Dejmek

Pitbull: Tough Women

  By

★★★
“Still Poles apart.”

Having enjoyed the same director’s Women of Mafia, I thought I’d check out this earlier film, part of his Pitbull series, also about Polish cops ‘n’ criminals. Unashamedly populist, in its home country the featire set a record for opening weekend admissions by a local movie, and topped the overall box-office there for 2016. More surprisingly, it was also a hit when released in Britain, reaching fifth place at the box-office in its first week, due almost entirely to the Polish expat community there. ‘

It’s a similarly sprawling tale to Mafia – perhaps even more so – which covers a range of characters, on both sides of the law. Despite the title, disappointingly, the focus is not particularly on the women. While there are certainly no shortage of interesting female characters, as we’ll see, the central one is ‘Sugar’ (Fabijanski), a member of a biker gang who is tasked with a revenge hit on ‘Majami’ (Stramowski), a cop who shot and killed a fellow gang-member. However, Sugar ends up diverting into a convoluted scam involving smuggling fuel oil. I can only presume this scheme made sense to the Polish audience, because I had no real clue what was going on.

On the “tough woman” front, the focus is on two new recruits to the police force, Zuza (Kulig) and Jadźka (Dereszowska). It doesn’t take long after completing their training,. for the shine to come off, as they realize the harsh realities of law-enforcement work, and the inevitable moral compromise beneath the surface. These are exemplified in Izabela (Magdalena Cielecka), a cop who is more than prepared to bend the law in order to protect it, to put it mildly. Both rookie officers have their issues, in particular Zuza, who eventually ends up having an affair with Sugar, while his girlfriend ‘Drabina’ (Alicja Bachleda) is in jail.

Elements of all this work very well. The characters are strong, performances solid, I loved the purely pragmatic approach of the cops (needed to deal with criminals who hardly obey the niceties of polite convention either), and there are some fine moments of pitch-black humour. I was especially amused by the scene involving stepping in a half-dissolved corpse, and the subsequent discussion over protocol, whether or not the poor policewoman should keep her footwear, and forensic pathology:
   “There’s the liver.”
   “A liver’s that small?”
   “It’s normal, but half is on your shoes.”

The problem is largely Vega’s failure to tell a coherent story. I wondered if this might be down to my lack of local knowledge e.g. the fuel scam, perhaps enhanced by not having seen the previous entries in the Pitbull franchise. However, reading some local reviews [all hail, Google Translate!] suggests it’s not just me, with this being a common complaint. I can’t help wishing the writer/director had actually delivered on the potential of his premise: while certainly an equal-opportunity piece, this still falls short of what I wanted. Perhaps Vega knew he had half-assed it, and that’s why he circled back around so quickly for the not-dissimilar Women of Mafia.

Dir: Patryk Vega
Star: Sebastian Fabijanski, Joanna Kulig, Anna Dereszowska, Piotr Stramowski

Women of Mafia

  By

★★★½
“Poles apart.”

This is new territory for me, being the first Polish film to qualify here. Turns out, director Vega has, largely single-handedly, driven a bit of a new wave of cinema from that country. Rather than the lugubrious dramas of Krzysztof Kieślowski, Vega is more like Guy Ritchie, making violent gangster flicks. In this case, the script came with direct input from the gangsters themselves, one of whom contacted Vega after being annoyed by their portrayal in a previous movie. Probably wisely, he opted to take their criticisms on board here…

It’s very much an ensemble piece, covering the stories of five different women. Though perhaps the film’s biggest issue is they’re not quite different enough, and for some time, I was sure that two were the same person! It starts with police officer Bela (Bołądź), being recruited to go undercover and infiltrate the Mokotowska organized crime gang, whose boss Padrino (Bogusław Linda) rules Warsaw with an iron fist. She becomes the lover of one of his top henchmen, known as Cieniu (Fabijański). When he eventually is arrested, his wife Anya (Warnke) and their nanny, Daria (Dygant), take on the mantle, and start working for Padrino instead.

It was Bela and Daria I conflated, initially thinking that Cieniu [which is Polish for “shadow” – never say we’re not educational here!] had got Bela a job in his house, after falling for her. I was eventually disavowed of that, not least because Daria has a real talent for the criminal world, in particular the brutality necessary to survive. This becomes particular apparent after the film’s most harrowing scene, where she takes her revenge on another gang who tried to muscle in on her drug-running business. By the time she’s done, all that’s left of them is their teeth. To be honest, Vega might have been better concentrating on her character, as Daria’s transition from mild-mannered nanny to bad-ass is awesome.

The rest of the stories and character arcs are more of a mixed bag. Bela largely vanishes from the film in the middle, which concentrated on Ania and Daria – the former is a real trophy wife, dumb as they come, and interested only in being able to spend money. There’s also Padrino’s daughter, known as “Futro” (Julia Wieniawa-Narkiewicz), who is the apple of her daddy’s eye – made apparent in a great scene where he praises her singing talent… and we then hear what she sounds like. That affection can be used against him, and when Futro’s drug use becomes a problem, Bela poses as a therapist to get into her father’s house that way. The fifth woman… I literally have no recollection of: Siekiera, played by Aleksandra Poplawska. Sorry. 

Even at 138 minutes long, the film is perhaps spread too thin: a mini series might have given the material more room to breathe. However, this is still an impressive, entertaining watch, and the time flies by. It’s slickly produced, and populated by figures who bear the shape of real-life – albeit perhaps in an exaggerated form. Vega has stated his intention is to make a trilogy, and the end certainly points that way. I’m looking forward to the next installment.

Dir:Patryk Vega
Star: Olga Bołądź, Sebastian Fabijański, Katarzyna Warnke, Agnieszka Dygant
a.k.a. Kobiety Mafii