A Pole living in Paris has problems with his hairdresser wife, becomes a bum, but chances on a way to stage a comeback - and get his own back on his neurotic wife!
While I have plenty of time for Krzysztof Kieslowski's work I find them a mixed bag. I started by believing that this was going to a farce, but somehow the movie seems to fight the only thing it is suited to being. No approach to any movie is "wrong", but this seems a movie at war with itself.
Small points seem laboured over, extended (Kubrick like) and others are painted with a thick brush. Don't let the drab Polish scenery fool you -we are heading towards an Alice in Wonderland finale!
The truth is that the script isn't very good and no director can rise above a mediocre script. One scene reminds me of the Rockford Files where villains bang on the door in the middle of the night and Jim Rockford opens the door to a gun in his face. Here we have a guy who is a bum one minute and a sharp businessman the next! The same guy that was bamboozled as to how to get home without money! Maybe it is the hair-gel that has raised his IQ!
People don't travel in suitcases to get from France to Poland because their passport is stolen. You would contact the Polish embassy! Or what about hitchhiking and sneaking across the border? Or borrowing money from people back home and getting a ticket back? And when you finally get out if it - wouldn't you, like, be a bit stiff or find the light made you blink a little?
The one thing I have learnt is that I don't like too much nonsense in serious films. This film lives on its acting and its sense of intrigue. However it is actually poorly written (everything that happens could make sense with a bit more care and explanation) and ends with a scene I don't really understand at all. And I don't tell me you do - because where is the information to understand it fully? How can you understand a court case/legal process (and I have to presume that there even was one!) without seeing it?
While I have plenty of time for Krzysztof Kieslowski's work I find them a mixed bag. I started by believing that this was going to a farce, but somehow the movie seems to fight the only thing it is suited to being. No approach to any movie is "wrong", but this seems a movie at war with itself.
Small points seem laboured over, extended (Kubrick like) and others are painted with a thick brush. Don't let the drab Polish scenery fool you -we are heading towards an Alice in Wonderland finale!
The truth is that the script isn't very good and no director can rise above a mediocre script. One scene reminds me of the Rockford Files where villains bang on the door in the middle of the night and Jim Rockford opens the door to a gun in his face. Here we have a guy who is a bum one minute and a sharp businessman the next! The same guy that was bamboozled as to how to get home without money! Maybe it is the hair-gel that has raised his IQ!
People don't travel in suitcases to get from France to Poland because their passport is stolen. You would contact the Polish embassy! Or what about hitchhiking and sneaking across the border? Or borrowing money from people back home and getting a ticket back? And when you finally get out if it - wouldn't you, like, be a bit stiff or find the light made you blink a little?
The one thing I have learnt is that I don't like too much nonsense in serious films. This film lives on its acting and its sense of intrigue. However it is actually poorly written (everything that happens could make sense with a bit more care and explanation) and ends with a scene I don't really understand at all. And I don't tell me you do - because where is the information to understand it fully? How can you understand a court case/legal process (and I have to presume that there even was one!) without seeing it?