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Never Gonna Snow Again
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| Year: |
2020
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Director: |
Malgorzata Szumowska, Michal Englert
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| Stars: |
Alec Utgoff, Maja Ostaszewksa, Agata Kulesza, Weronika Rosati, Katarzyna Figura, Lukasz Simlat, Andrzej Chila, Krzysztof Czeczot, Maciej Drosio, Olaf Marchwicki, Astrid Nanowska, Wojciech Starostecki, Jerzy Nasierowski, Konstantin Solowiow
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| Genre: |
Drama, Weirdo |
| Rating: |
  7 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
Zhenia (Alec Utgoff) lives in a depressed part of this Polish city, but has an idea of how to make something of himself so picks up his massage table in its bag and walks the long distance to the better part of the city, a gated community where he sees the head of the residents. They have a brief conversation where Zhenia does not speak very much, and the head expresses scepticism that he should aspire to work there - until the mysterious man hypnotises this community leader and signs the form necessary himself. Thus empowered, he can move freely among the wealthy folks' houses, performing massages for them that are so effective they feel almost transformed. But each session ends with him hypnotising them...
Prominent Polish arthouse director Malgorzata Szumowska promoted her cinematographer Michal Englert to co-director for this urban fairy tale, with Zhenia something of the cunning fox making it in among the built up areas and aspiring to more than his reduced circumstances may offer him. You could recognise the matter of class being brought up, and the trouble with that in a very specific foreign environment for the international audience would be they would not pick up on every nuance the film featured. Therefore many walked away from this in a state of bored confusion, unsure of what the point was, though there was a contingent who acknowledged Szumowska's talent and her way with weaving an enigmatic spell here.
What was going on? As mentioned, even at the ending which concludes with some stage magic and a warning about the climate change threatening the world you could easily emerge from this none the wiser, but it appeared to be alluding to Poland's newfound nationalism post-Soviet Bloc, and how they could not admit to each other how much they longed to return to the Russian fold. There, life may have been hard, but you knew where you stood, and Zhenia's provenance of Ukraine seemed laden with symbolism, especially when we learn he hails from a town in Chernobyl and was there when the nuclear power station disaster occurred. It appears to give him uncomfortable memories of his time there, not that this man of few words is going to open up to any of his clients, in fact that is more their job to react to him.
Is he one of a long line of supernatural strangers in European cinema? He certainly looks it, and Utgoff's lightly amused but hard to read features contributed to the air of the mysterious even as the directors bolstered it with scenes of the characters under hypnosis: where do their spirits go when they are under the influence? They're not lost in a kind of regression therapy, that is at least clear, they have escaped into a nighttime forest environment which is at once very peaceful and dreamy but also strange and sinister into the bargain. Meanwhile, as these ladies and gentlemen of a certain age are escaping their real life concerns, he helps himself to their homes, investigating their possessions and even embarking on a dance around the rooms and up and down the stairs. As all this is going on, reality is closing in on him and he may have to escape himself, but there was plenty unreal about the waking world too: the problems may have been real, like anti-immigrant sentiment, alcoholism or cancer, but it took place in a twisted sitcom scenario where everyone thought it acceptable to have joylessly intricate wreaths on the front doors, accompanied by ostentatious doorbells. Funny? Funny peculiar, sure.
[Click here to watch on MUBI.]
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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