Rewers
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Rewers |
| Original title | Rewers |
| Country of production | Poland |
| original language | Polish , English |
| Publishing year | 2009 |
| length | 99 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Borys Lankosz |
| script | Andrzej Bart |
| music | Włodzimierz Pawlik |
| camera | Marcin Koszałka |
| cut | Magdalena Dipont |
| occupation | |
| |
Rewers is a Polish feature film from 2009 directed by Borys Lankosz .
action
The story of the unfulfilled love of Sabina, an employee of a literary publisher, is shown on two levels of time - frame story Warsaw 2008, main story Warsaw 1952/1953. The elderly Sabina in modern Warsaw looks back on her tragic short romance with the son's father while waiting for her only son, who lives in the United States, to visit. These are the hard years of the Stalin era, society is afraid of the omnipresent spies of the UB secret police . The 30-year-old Sabina lives with her mother and grandmother, the family belonged to the Warsaw prewar intelligentsia and is critical of the communist regime, which nobody dares to show. Sabina is responsible for poetry in the publishing house, but her favorite poets, the French and Russian symbolists, are not allowed to be published because she regards communist censorship as decadent .
Her fiancé died as a resistance fighter, a new partner is not in sight. Therefore, her mother, who disapproves of this situation, starts looking for a man willing to marry. She invites an accountant known to the family to dinner and advertises him as a solid person. But the guest gets drunk senseless that evening, so that the mother also sees that he is out of the question as a husband for Sabine. The grandmother is skeptical of this kind of search for marriage candidates anyway.
One evening on the way home from the publishing house, two petty criminals snatch her handbag from Sabina. But a third man comes along, knocks down the two criminals and gives her the bag back. He introduces himself as Bronisław. Sabina meets with him very soon, he is charming, she falls in love with him. Finally she invites him home, the mother is very impressed by the daughter's admirer.
But then Bronisław did not contact her for a long time. Sabina waits longingly for him. When he finally stands at her door again, the two have two hours for each other. The mother is not at home, the grandmother is sick in her room next door. But suddenly Bronisław is no longer the charming master of the first encounters. He rapes Sabina on the dining table and then demands that she spy on her boss at the publishing house. Sabina can't stand the humiliation, she drips poison into the liqueur for Bronislaw. This squirms in pain and dies while Sabina stands by, frightened.
A little later the mother comes back. She realizes that the dead man was a UB agent. After the first shock, she decides to have the body disappear, otherwise the family would face severe reprisals from the University Library. Together with Sabine, she takes the corpse up the stairwell to the attic, where her son, who is currently absent, who works as a restaurateur, has set up a painting studio. On the way there, they are watched by the neighbor's wife. But when she asks him to report Sabina and her mother, a group of UB men comes and arrests the neighbor, who used to be a member of an anti-communist organization.
In the painter's studio, the two women put the body in a large tub and pour several canisters of hydrochloric acid into it, which are otherwise used for the restoration work. When the brother unexpectedly arrives with two drunk friends, the women quickly cover the pool in the next room with pictures, including propaganda portraits of the communist leaders. The men invite the women to drink and dance, only when the two friends are completely drunk, they manage to compliment them out.
A few days later, the mother stows the dead body's leftover bones, which have withstood the hydrochloric acid, in a violin case. Sabina takes him to the building site of the Warsaw Palace of Culture . A Soviet soldier tries to stop her, but she can escape. She buries the violin case in a pile of sand. A little later it turns out that Sabina is pregnant as a result of the rape. When she is heavily pregnant, she walks through the street with her mother when loudspeaker trucks announce the news of Stalin's death . While the passers-by stop with bowed heads in public, mother and daughter rush into a back yard and embrace cheering. Sabina's joyful dance triggers labor.
In 2008 she was waiting at Warsaw Airport for her son who was returning from New York . On All Saints' Day , she visits the family grave with her son, who is obviously homosexual, and his American friend. Then he can drive her to the Kulturpalast, where she puts up a candle. She used to tell her son that her father was a resistance fighter who was shot by the communists. Even now she keeps the true story to herself. The son, rather listlessly, briefly tells his friend about the communist era in Poland. But he is hardly interested in it.
criticism
Several Polish film critics described the film as "the first black comedy about the Stalin era".
Awards
At the 34th Polish Film Festival in Gdynia , the film received the Grand Prix in five categories:
- Best Actress (Agata Buzek)
- Best camera work (Marcin Koszałka)
- Best Music (Włodzimierz Pawlik)
- Best Supporting Role (Marcin Dorociński)
- Best make-up (Mirosława Wojtczak, Ludmiła Krawczyk, Waldemar Pokromski)
He also won other prizes, including the FIPRESCI at the 25th Warsaw Film Festival for best debut .
In 2010, Rewers was awarded a total of eight Polish Orły Film Awards.
At the Camerimage Film Festival , cinematographer Marcin Koszałka was awarded the Bronze Frog.
background
The Polish word "rewers" describes the reverse of a coin (derived from the French reverse ). In the film, a gold dollar has a leitmotif : on the back is the English word "Liberty". The title of the film thus refers to the desire for political freedom, which, however, was not allowed to be expressed during the Stalin era.
The family owns the dollar coin, but the communist authorities have banned the possession of foreign currency. Sabina tells the mother and grandmother that she has safely hidden him. But she does not say that she repeatedly swallowed the gold dollar, which is shown several times in close-ups, and that she carefully cleans it after it has reappeared in the toilet, which is only hinted at on the film. The gold dollar thus also stands for the fear of the three women and the entire society of the UB. The antihero Bronisław shocked Sabina by pointing out that he not only knew about the coin, but also about the hiding place. He thus proves the fear of an omnipresent surveillance state in which everyone can be spied on down to the most intimate area. It remains open where Bronisław's knowledge comes from.
The scenes from the action, which took place in 1952 and 1953, were shot in black and white and mixed with original newsreel recordings ; In this way, the slogans of communist propaganda are contrasted with the everyday life of the people in the film plot. The scenes in Warsaw in 2008 were shot in color.
Web links
- Rewers in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Review (English)
- Review on Gazeta.pl (Polish)
- Film profile on cineuropa.org
Individual evidence
- ↑ "Rewers" triumfuje w Gdyni ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Reverse takes FIPRESCI prize at Warsaw 25th film festival ( Memento from October 2, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
