The first film I saw at this year's Madison Polish Film Festival was Filip Bajon's War of Love (Śluby panieńskie). Bajon himself was to have been in attendance but fell ill at the last minute and so spent the evening at his hotel room. A real disappointment but kudos must still go out to Sebastian Jankowski and the rest of the crew who put the festival together for even getting a director to agree to come to Madison.
War of Love is based on Aleksander Fredro's 19th century comedic play Śluby panieńskie or Maiden's Vows. I have seen bits of Andrzej Wajda's Revenge which was also based on a work by Fredro so I kinda sorta knew what to expect.
As it turns out, War of Love is reminiscent of Shakespeare's Love’s Labor’s Lost. It's Poland in 1825 and two young women, Klara and Aniela are being spirited away by their families to seal their fates in marriage. Aniela looks out from her carriage joyously while her cousin Klara looks angry. A beautiful and somewhat retiring blonde, Aniela is bequeathed to Gustav while the headstrong and feisty Klara is promised to Albin who is a bit dimwitted but otherwise an earnest suitor. Klara inveigles Aniela into a blood oath to hate men and never be married.
Gustav is pretty blasé about the whole affair. He is bored with country life and isn't quite ready to give up his status as a libertine, much to his uncle Radost's chagrin. Albin is just the opposite. He longs for a wife and domesticity to temper his ways. (Luckily there always seems to be someone on hand to throw a bucket of water on him and provide a face for him to slap to calm him down.) When word of Klara and Aniela's pact reaches then, Gustav comes up with a bit of subterfuge to change the women's minds.
It is all rather standard romantic comedy stuff. Until you see a cell phone for the first time. Radost comes upon the ladies bathing naked in a local lake. He lies on the ground by their horses and we see that one of them has a tramp stamp, the first sign that something is amiss. Then Radost pulls out a cell phone and calls Klara. This odd scene is compounded by others showing the actors sitting around a table ostensibly between takes. There is this subplot which goes all meta about how Marta Żmuda-Trzebiatowska, the actress who plays Klara gets between Robert Więckiewicz (Radost) and his sweetie on the set.
This bit with the actors' lives intruding on the story of the film was absurdist-lite in a Monty Python kind of way. It was amusing in its own right and certainly not completely distracting but I suspect that if I knew a bit more about contemporary Polish cinema/actors, it would have made more sense.
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