United States of Love

Director Tomasz Wasilewski's third feature is set in Poland in 1990 and explores the effect of the collapse of Communism on four women living in a soulless high-rise estate. Consumerist goods may be trickling in from the West, but little else seems different for siblings Iza (Magdalena Cielecka), a respectable headmistress, and dance teacher Marzena (Marta Nieradkiewicz), with the former struggling to sustain her affair with a widowed doctor and the latter receiving the unwonted attentions of a reclusive neighbour (Dorota Kolak). Offering sobering insights into the illusory promise of change that follows a seismic political upheaval, the stories also shed light on a young mother (Julia Kijowska) and her passion for the parish priest. Meanwhile, Wasilewski draws on memories from his own youth while adroitly melding styles from the Polish Cinema of Moral Anxiety (1976-81) and the Romanian New Wave (courtesy of Oleg Mutu's arrestingly bleached imagery). Intimate, oppressive and persuasively played, it's a film that nimbly shifts perspective to capture the impact of transition on ordinary lives. But it is primarily a treatise on the painful reality of unrequited love.