An aspiring writer (Zygmunt Malanowicz), frustrated with his cramped, drab life with his wife and in-laws, dives into
an affair with the tawny kook (Malgorzara Braunek) he meets at the local freakout. To him, she's the key out of his dull
bureaucratic existence; to her, he's her ticket into high society. The couple's mutual exploitation provides the germ for a
satire on sexual relations in 1969 Warsaw -- or, rather, it would have provided if director Andrej Wajda gave a more
balanced portrayal of the affair instead of focusing exclusively on the sadsack hero's view of women as emasculating
insects. Wajda's touch is way too heavy for the attempted gags (a group of Polish Beatles yeah-yeah-yeahing to a sob
song with tear-streaked mugs), but the movie's most dispiriting aspect is its cynical slam on romantic relationships. The
freshness and delicacy lavished on young people almost a decade earlier in Innocent Sorcerers (one of Wajda's most
undervaluated films, though I believe screenwriter Jerzy Skolimowski's contribution had a lot to do with it) becomes a
sort of soured, middle-aged male disillusionment here. Between the terrifyingly toothsome heroine, who enthuses about
semantics while cuming, and the hordes of bullying, snapping, manipulating women, there's enough misogyny for four
or five backlashes against late ’60s female empowerment. Also with Ewa Skarzanka and Józef Pieracki.
--- Fernando F. Croce
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