Signis

Tatarak (Sweet Rush)

(JPEG) (Poland, 2009, d. Andrej Wajda. Berlin Competition)

Veteran Polish director, Andrej Wajda, has made many films since the 1950s, is now in his 80s. His vision is a touch melancholic, focused on illness and death, but his directorial skill is still very much alive.

This brief film has two stories in one. Adapting a short story by Krystina Janda about her cinematographer husband’s terminal cancer and death, he has Janda herself present this memoir in a dramatic monologue. It is intercut into the film within the film, based on quite a different short story, in which she is playing the role of a middle-aged woman, a doctor’s wife in a small town, who is charmed by a young man.

The title of the film in English is ’Sweet Rush’. It could be interpreted as the sweet rush of infatuated love the woman feels. However, it is the name of a water reed whose stems are used as decoration at the beginning of summer, at Pentecost, because of its distinctive odour.

As well, there is a ’realistic’ scene as the actress becomes upset during the filming of a sequence where the young man is swimming with a bunch of sweet rush and gets into difficulties. The actress flees the location as the town now teems with rain.

Wajda has his character contemplate illness, time passing and death and the film, though brief and well-acted by Krystina Janda, is often moving.

Peter Malone