52 Films by Women Vol 6. 39. OTHER PEOPLE (Inni Ludzie) (Director: Aleksandra Terpinska)
Contemporary Polish
films aren’t much fun. Other countries inspire frothy romantic comedies in
which income is not an issue. Not Poland. Other countries show off iconic
architecture as a backdrop. Not Poland. The first image that comes to mind when
I think of Poland is the Gdansk shipyards. I think of Lech Walesa and the
Solidarity movement. When I watch contemporary Polish films, I see depressed
women of all income brackets struggling with bad relationships under a grey
sky. They might enjoy sex, but they aren’t in control of their destiny. They
will inevitably be punished for their transgression. It is as if the filmmaker
is wagging a finger to warn the audience, ‘Don’t do this’. Polish films will feature
‘bad boys’, young male protagonists with anti-social attitudes who express
their loathing of homosexuality and contempt for women. In some films, loathing
and contempt extends to other cultures. These are our principal viewpoint
characters, thugs nursing a wound or two, striking out and exploiting others.
My assessment is
based on films I have reviewed in this series: Satan Said Dance, Zabawa Zabawa, Twarz
(Mug) and 365 Days. With the exception of the latter, these aren’t box office or streaming
winners. They appear to offer social critiques but instead invite the audience
to enjoy elements of anti-social behaviour. No one wants to leave the cinema
feeling depressed so instead the viewer watches these movies with a profound
sympathy for the bad boys (or girls) and a delight when they punish others.
Other People (Inni
Ludzie) is just such a
miserable drama. It is a rap musical, Poland’s answer to the British films Ill Manors and Blue Story. It is modelled
on films that feature Asian and Black protagonists. Polish films, by contrast, are
not ethnically diverse; they claim white victimhood. This is an assertion also
made by conspiracy theorists in the US and other countries claiming that a
‘great [ethnic] replacement’ is taking place. There is no evidence of such a
replacement in spite of what you might read in a chatroom.
Stylized from the
outset, Other People is based on Dorota Masłowska’s 2018 novel, described on the website culture.pl as a
‘polyphonic hybrid of poetry and written prose’. The film, with music by Marek Aureliusz
Teodoruk, billed professionally as Auer, and co-written by Masłowska and the film’s director, Aleksandra
Terpińska, begins with its
protagonist, thirty-two-year-old, partially tattooed Kamil (Jacek Beler) in a
fever dream. He tosses his blankets over a Lego ™ spaceship heading towards the
Earth. Kamil imagines himself as the pilot. Kamil doesn’t imagine the
adventures he might have on his own with his Lego ™ joystick. He is in
miserable Poland (production information indicates Warsaw) doing miserable
Polish stuff.
Kamil lives with his
mother (Beata Kawka) and his younger sister (Zuzanna Bernat). ‘Got anything to
eat?’ he asks the former, who sleeps on the sofa, a symptom of late nights or a
two-bedroom apartment. A spartan fridge answers the question. Kamil doesn’t
like the smell of perfume, so he pours it over his sister’s homework. She
complains vociferously. Leaving the apartment, he passes by a plant pot where
he has secreted his stash of weed. Jump cut - intake of puff. Kamil has an appointment
and a 15,000 zloty (£2,680 – did I read that correctly?) mobile phone bill.
Clearly the deregulation of Poland’s telephony market does nothing for the
consumer. Naturally, he enters a tram through the rear door. No buying a ticket
for him. Looking on is Jezus (Sebastian Fabijanski), who initially is shown watching
him through a video monitor. For a brief moment, I wondered if the film was
going to turn into the Polish version of Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings
of Desire) but that’s a hard
‘nein’. Jezus is the film’s equivalent of a Greek chorus, only he’s Polish and
looks like he hasn’t washed his hair for a month. Do you need showers in the
afterlife? Jezus is here to rap and to be Kamil’s reflection in a mirror. He’s
not much of a saviour, rather a savourer, a sampler in Kamil’s life of
diminishing returns.
Kamil makes what
little income he has from the plant pot. He enters a pharmacy for some petty
larceny. The bored girl behind the counter fixes him a stare. She is Aneta
(Magdalena Kolesnik). Their flirtation enlivens her day. Fast forward to a
relationship in which Kamil naturally lets her down, living the cliché (which ought not to be true), ‘treat ‘em
mean, keep ‘em keen’.
Aneta isn’t the only
woman he compulsively underwhelms. Meet Iwona (Sonia Bohosiewicz), a wealthy
bored housewife and mother whose husband, Maciej (Marek Kalita) has a teenage
daughter from a previous relationship, Lena (Milena Walenta) who has an eating disorder. Iwona has Kamil on call to fulfil a vague desire for human
contact, telling him before he pleases her not to wear his socks. She is a
walking cliché that the filmmakers
consider ripe for ridicule. Lena claims that her father spent too much on
Iwona’s breast implants. At one point – the film doesn’t conflate misery with
social realism – Iwona rips out an organ (or perhaps silicone) from her chest,
dices it up and eats it. At least she
can cook. Iwona and Maciej has a young son who plays violent videogames and
demands pasta to eat. ‘Without sauce!’ he insists, several decibels higher than
necessary.
Jezus raps: ‘Grey
faces. People don’t dream. Winter sales is the one thing they’re interested
in.’ Terpińska and Masłowska shuffle misery more or less constantly throughout
the film’s running time. There is a thread: Kamil dreams of being a recording
artist. He was supposed to meet a guy but somehow didn’t make it. He inflates
himself linguistically on a bus to an old acquaintance he meets in the rear. However,
the passengers who join in with the musical soundtrack aren’t impressed.
Iwona doesn’t sing
but imagines herself found out by the teacher and parents at a Parent-Teacher
meeting, where they all stare at her accusingly. She loaned Kamil the money to
reactivate his mobile phone and now he’s back in circulation - no need to upset
his young sister.
There are numerous
sex scenes, but no male nudity – Poland is a Catholic country. There are
moments when Terpińska and Masłowska subvert their characters, firstly when
the homophobic Kamil gets high on drugs and homoerotically bumps chests with a
male friend – what larks. Secondly, when Aneta is revealed to be a fat-shamer
and suffers the anger of her flatmate, Justa (Dominika Gwit) after an Instagram
make-over, in which Aneta writes ‘fat’ [in English] on one of Justa’s cheeks
and ‘pig’ on the other. I confess that Justa striking back provided the only
moment of relief, but then I remembered that these are cartoon stereotypes and
that there is no connection to real justice.
Drama, such as it
is, comes from the police raiding Kamil’s apartment, looking for his stash.
Like real life, Kamil missed it. He attempts to make money by taking four
Christmas trees that have been donated to poor families and selling them on at
30 zloty each. Late in the film, he wrecks his family’s Christmas tree after
contemplating a rocket-shaped decoration, shortly after rapping the question,
‘why do bad people do bad things?’ It was his mother’s fault, he decides. As a
child, his sister received the present of a Lego ™ spaceship, which he
assembled. He was delighted. His mother took it away from him and tried to sell
it to neighbours. ‘It has been opened,’ one complains. This, according to
Kamil’s self-justifying narrative, turned him bad.
In the film,
legitimate satire turns into product placement. Maciej trades in his
gluten-free lunchboxes for Pizza Hut ™ pizza, which he snacks on greedily. The
transients who are the beneficiaries of his leftovers ask passers-by for
sugar-free and healthy snacks. Maciej offers to take his young daughter for a
meal. ‘Are you joking?’ she replies. The purpose of their interaction is to get
a selfie which Maciej uses as cover to meet Klaudia Bochon (Marta Ojrzyńska), his mistress. Klaudia lives her life on
social media; Iwona likes her posts. She also smashes the back of her own car after
leaving the Parent-Teachers meeting having imagined censure, before going on a
spending spree.
The one moderately
happy character is Iwona’s buxom motherly Ukrainian cleaner. Ukrainians are
criticised for providing cheap labour, doing the jobs that Poles won’t do. ‘Do
you miss your family?’ Iwona asks her sadistically. The cleaner answers
truthfully.
When Kamil calls at
the perfume counter, he finds that Aneta has phoned in sick. There is a body
outside the apartment block where she lives. Revenue inspectors board a tram on
which Kamil is travelling for free. He avoids a fine. Characters’ lives are as
miserable at the end of the film as they are at the beginning. Kamil may have
had sex and been able to make calls on his mobile but remains no closer to
being a rapper, lacking beats or, more accurately, talent.
Reviewed at
Cineworld Wood Green, Screen Four, Tuesday 26 April 2022, 20:00 screening
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