I saw this this morning and was impressed (and harrowed). As you say, apart from festival screenings it hasn't had a UK release on large screen or small. I wonder if this is something Second Run might be interested in?MichaelB wrote:Rose (Róża, d. Wojciech Smarzowski)
Since I was already a fan of Wojciech Smarzowski's films, and I knew in advance that this was one of the most critically acclaimed Polish films of recent years, expectations were pitched accordingly high - but even then they were comfortably exceeded. Rose is a relentlessly grim, often unbearably painful film to watch, not just because of its parade of onscreen atrocities (I don't think I've ever seen a film with quite so many rape scenes) but for the light they shed on one of the most shameful periods of central European history, in which the Czechs and Poles essentially colluded with the Allies (especially the Soviets) to embark on a programme of what can only be described as ethnic cleansing on a massive scale - historian R.M. Douglas, author of Orderly and Humane, reckons that 12-14 million people were directly affected.
Rose (Agata Kulesza) is one of them, her "crime" being insufficiently Polish to secure "verification" as a legitimate resident of Masuria, a region of central Europe that passed from Germany to Poland in 1945, its new rulers expelling as many non-Poles as possible from land that they and their ancestors had blamelessly occupied for centuries. She's guarded by Tadeusz (Marcin Dorociński), a former family friend, but he's uncomfortably aware that he has a secret of his own that he's very keen to withhold from the authorities. Smarzowski combines palm-sweating set-pieces (in order to reclaim Rose's fertile farmland, Tadeusz has to sweep for mines with nothing more sophisticated than a bayonet and a length of wire) with more complex reflections on the then-current national malaise - the dialogue switches from Polish to German to Russian for reasons of survival as much as linguistic necessity. I can only assume that the complex historical background and the lack of name actors (outside Poland, anyway) are the main things that have prevented it getting UK distribution, as it's one hell of a lot stronger than plenty of other recent films that have managed it.
And of sixteen recent Polish films I've seen recently or have DVDs to watch (ten DVDs bought in Warsaw, six screeners from the Kinoteka festival and Ida) Agata Kulesza is in seven of them! I wonder how big a name she is in her native country?
That was another one I bought, from the other Central Warsaw branch of Empik. I haven't watched it yet. You probably know that there is a UK DVD of this, from the LGBT-specialist label TLA.MichaelB wrote:And that last review reminds me that I also strongly recommend Jan Komasa’s The Suicide Room, one of the best Polish debuts in living memory - the DVD is definitely English-friendly.