As international as it undoubtedly is, the London Film Festival makes
one concession to old-fashioned Englishness with its rather quaintly-titled
“Filmmakers’ Afternoon Teas.” Held at The Mayfair Hotel, these gatherings give
journalists the chance to meet directors in an informal setting, for either
one-on-one or roundtable interviews.
Having admired Body/Ciało at this year’s Gdynia Film Festival (you can read my full coverage of the Festival here), where the movie won the main “Golden Lions” prize, I was happy to
have the opportunity to speak with Małgorzata Szumowska about the film. Born in
1973, and an alumna of Kraków's Jagiellonian University and of Łódź Film School, Szumowska had made two features before
her breakthrough film 33 Scenes From Life (33 sceny z życia) (2008) brought her to wider attention. Since
then, Szumowska has established herself as one of Poland’s most interesting
contemporary filmmakers, and one who’s eager to explore controversial subject
matter, be it prostitution - in the Juliette Binoche-starring
Elles (2011) - or a Catholic priest’s recognition of his homosexuality
in
In the Name Of
(W imię....) (2012).
Body/Ciało strikes me as Szumowska’s most accomplished
and sustained work to date, however. Combining elements of detective drama, supernatural
enquiry and deadpan black comedy, the movie focuses on a widowed prosecutor (veteran
Janusz Gajos), his anorexic teenage daughter, Olga (newcomer Justyna Suwała), and the
latter’s therapist, Anna (Maja Ostaszewska), a spiritualist who believes that Olga’s mother is trying
to make contact from beyond the grave. At its heart, Body/Ciało is essentially
another work that pits reason against faith, presenting an archetypal face-off
between cynic and believer. But the idiosyncratic spins that the film puts on
that familiar premise make it an appropriately haunting experience, and one of
the year’s most significant Polish productions.
“I tend to begin with a word, or an image that I want to
explore,” Szumowksa tells me, when I ask her how the film evolved. “Initially I
had the idea of writing about anorexia, after meeting someone who was dealing
with this condition. However, that ultimately felt too limiting. I didn’t want
to make an issue film here, but rather something that explored the concept of
the body more broadly.”
Bodies young and old, thin and fat, healthy and dead, fill
the frames of Szumowska’s movie, which is shot in a cool, dispassionate style.
As with In the Name Of, the director collaborated on the film’s
screenplay with the cinematographer, Michał Englert (who is also
Ostaszewska’s
partner), and I wondered how writing with a DP impacts upon the creative
process. “It means that we’re thinking about form and the visual style from the
very beginning,” Szumowska says. “Michał will often send me images and
clips as we start. They might be from films or music videos, but that’s how we begin
to develop our approach and to think about the look and tone of the film.”
Alongside its highly distinctive visuals and framing, Body/Ciało
is also striking in its incorporation of pop music. Szumowska employs two songs
in the film. One is Gerry and the Pacemaker’s version of “You’ll Never Walk
Alone”, written by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the spiritually-minded
Carousel, and later co-opted as a football anthem, which is employed
in the film as a possible message from the dead matriarch. The other track is
the punky “Śmierć w bikini” by the iconic Polish rock band Republika, which scores a memorable bare-breasted dancing
scene by the veteran actress Ewa Dałkowska. When I ask
Szumowska about her reasoning in choosing these tracks, it soon becomes clear
that both songs have highly personal associations for the filmmaker.
“Ah, Liverpool!” Szumowska says delightedly, with reference
to “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” “My son and I are big football fans. We were
listening to various anthems, and this one stood out, especially for the
lyrical content, which connects with the film’s themes. As for 'Śmierć w bikini' I have very fond memories of listening to Republika when I was a
teenager in the 1980s, and of seeing them in concert. In those grey, oppressive
Communist days, a band like this represented freedom for us, a kind of
liberation. There is something so absurd about 'Śmierć w bikini', and yet it’s
a bit scary and sexual at the same time. As with 'You’ll Never Walk Alone' I
was also drawn to the lyrical content, and felt that it could serve the film.”
The absurd, the sexual, the scary: Body/Ciało
combines all of these, and Szumowska says that she’s always excited by “mixing
genres,” viewing this as a way of “keeping the audience off balance.” The film
is also hybridised at the level of its title, with its combination of English
and Polish. “In part this was for practical reasons, since there was already a popular
Polish film called Ciało,” Szumowska admits, referring to Tomasz Konecki and
Andrzej Saramonowicz’s 2003 comedy. “Naturally, we wanted to distinguish our
film from that one. But the title also
speaks to a duality that’s at the heart of the film. So many of the scenes have
double meanings, or can be understood in two ways. In addition, increasingly in
Poland, the younger generation moves fluidly between Polish and English. The title
was a way of referring to this, too.”
While Gajos and Suwała were awarded the Best Actor
and Best Debut prizes at Gdynia, Maja Ostaszewska was overlooked for her work
as Anna, though Szumowska has described her performance as in many ways “the
heart of the film.” “The role was written for Maja,” Szumowska tells me. “She’s
been in many movies and is also well respected as a theatre actress. Since she
has quite a glamorous persona, some people were surprised that we would think
of her for an asexual character such as Anna. But she’s a wonderful actress and
of course she could do it. And we were well aware of the comedy she could bring
to the role.”
Part of the comedy in the early scenes of
the film comes from Anna’s interactions with her dog, a massive mutt named Fredek;
their bond is revealed in a priceless sequence that wouldn’t have been out of
place in Turner & Hooch.
“The dog certainly improvised,” Szumowska says, wryly. “He just pulled Maja
along in those scenes where she’s walking him.”
The working-class Polish neighbourhoods depicted in
Body/Cialo are far from glamorous, either, but the film gives them a particular grandeur
and, at times, a strange beauty, as in a striking shot in which Anna sits dwarfed by massive tenement
housing behind her. I recall the experience of watching Body/Ciało at a public screening in Gdynia, the cinema packed with an appreciative and
responsive crowd, despite the film already having opened in Poland several
months before the Festival. To what extent does Szumowska see
Body/Ciało as telling a specifically Polish story?
“Well, the context is certainly Polish, and of course there
are certain elements that will resonate strongly with Poles. But we were striving for
something universal, too, and ultimately the film is a family story. This is
what films should provide, I believe: universal stories, emerging from a
particular context. Polish audiences do seem
to love this film. But I’m happy that it also travels well.”
Szumowska has another screenplay already completed, and
while she was reluctant to divulge too many details about it at this stage, she
hinted that the movie might in some way
be an elaboration of the themes explored in Body/Ciało
The
new project's working title? “Face.”
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