P/REVIEW

Colourfully depicting the very unsentimental education sentimentale of a handsome blond Polish post-adolescent aristrocrat while his country succumbs to Oriental invaders, Wiktor Grodecki’s extraordinary adaptation of the literary succès de scandale Insatiability (Nienasycenie) should raise more than a few eyebrows inter alia when its uncut version premieres in the superb surrounds of the Zoo-Palast (Friday, 13 February, 18.45). Invited into the Panorama Special selection, Grodecki may be first-footing here as a fiction director, but his documentaries on the »lost youth« of Prague are well known in Berlin, and his 1997 feature Mandragora on kindred themes scooped no less than five awards and large cash prizes at the Stars de Demain Festival in Geneva.

This is his first film in his native Polish, imaginatively taken from the novel by fellow-controversialist Stanislaw Witkiewicz, published in 1927 but set in a future, apocalyptic belle epoque. Starring one of Poland’s most popular actors, Cezary Pazura (who, like Grodecki, studied under Wojciech Haas at the legendary Lodz Film School) and also one of the best-loved old masters of the Polish cinema, Leon Niemczyk, this lavish-looking production was nevertheless entirely filmed in Vilnius, with beautifully-crafted studio sets and period costumes and clever use of historic locations around the beautiful Lithuanian city with long-lasting links to Poland. A score by the contemporary Polish jazz musician Mozdzer subtly enhances the surreal swirl of passions sacred and profane as the hapless hero falls prey to an insatiable princess, a beautiful actress, and a deformed but charismatic (male) composer. With Poland on the threshold of joining the New Europe, this sardonic threnody on the decline of the Old Europe offers a timely counter-blast and some very dark humour.

Philip Bergson