Polish movie festival opens in London (and some social commentary)

[Martinus]

Kinoteka unspools new views of Poland
At the annual Polish film festival, a pair of sensational new films – Mall Girls and Snow White, Russian Red – give a glimpse of life in post-communist, post-EU accession Poland

When it comes to the Poles in their midst, your average Brit's grip on the facts tends to be a little shaky. There are more than a million Poles in residence in the UK, aren't there? Or is the number closer to half that? Some say they're toughing out the recession; others declare they are being lured home in droves by repatriation campaigns. It seems as if there's a Polski sklep on every high street, but where the hell's a shop selling kiełbasa when you need one?

But if most of us are unsure what it's like for Poles in Britain, we're utterly in the dark as to what it's like back in Poland. A pair of sensational (if not sensationalising) new Polish films could be just the spotlight needed: Mall Girls and Snow White, Russian Red, which were recently given their UK premieres at the Kinoteka Polish international film festival. Each is a glimpse of Poland's first post-communist generation, and shows a country beset by social ills: teenage prostitution, drug use, cheap consumerism, hooligans in ladies' furs terrorising fast-food employees. In other words, they seem to depict a country not far different from the UK.

Poland's Trainspotting is the marketing hook most often Velcroed on to Snow White, Russian Red. The film is a flashy adaptation by Xawery Żuławski (son of cult director Andrzej) of the novel by Dorota Masłowska, who was all of 19 when her book stormed the Polish literary scene. Our hero is Yobbo, whose name says it all – unemployed, violent, directionless, with a taste for white powders and seeing red. And he's just been dumped. He attempts to cope via the twin expedients of amphetamines and incoherent political discussions with a motley crew of goth chicks, butch thuggettes and, for a hilarious few minutes, a dorky student whose interest he rewards by peeing on her budgie. But Yobbo also has a certain garrulous way with words, a babbling stream of consciousness – and he's about to learn the words are not his own.

The film plays on Polishness: not only in the language which, in the original (though not the somewhat clunky translation) is a highly inventive slang, but in Yobbo himself, who walks around in a white football jacket marked Polska (Poland). "In the irony of the level of the language, we Poles can find ourselves, our sense of humour," Żuławski told me after the UK premiere. Yobbo is a dresiarz, which translates roughly as "tracksuit guy". This is the Polish equivalent of the British hoodie, their tight jeans and leather jackets a typical sight in smaller Polish towns. "He is representative of a state of mind of men in Poland nowadays, a kind of typically male consciousness," Żuławski says. For Yobbo, the game is rigged: the west is corrupt and a shadowy figure named Robert Sztorm calls all the shots at home. There is a hopelessness in Yobbo's having "no future" that, the film suggests, makes him a character or puppet: at the beck of outside forces, his life not under his own control.

If Snow White is a kind of metafictional chav poem, Mall Girls is straight-up social realism, and harder to watch for it. The girls in question are a gang of bubble-popping 14-year-olds in pink plastic jackets and white knee-high boots who sell their bodies to older men in exchange for heart-shaped jewellery from the local equivalent of Accessorize. Ala is the "good" girl who gets swept up in the mall girls' world, half-seduced and half-belittled by Milena, who supposedly wants nothing more than to help Ala enjoy the "high life" – which to her means going back to a man's apartment rather than just sucking him off in the car. Ala's tragic attempt to try to catch up sexually makes Katarzyna Rosłaniec's film an affecting, occasionally agonising experience.

Both films seem to suggest a generation gap has stranded young Poles. The mall girls don't know any better than to trade virginity for jeans because their elders never taught them otherwise. "It seems that sex for clothes or other things is becoming the new kind of prostitution in Poland," says Małgorzata Szwarocka, a sexologist in Warsaw. "Without proper sexual education in schools, and the consumptional lifestyle, it is unfortunately a natural consequence." Poland is still a "land of prudery", she says, and the film has shocked the communist generation and started a national debate, similar to the ongoing one about enjo kosai ("compensated dating") in Japan – another country with a huge generation gap.

This very shock is symptomatic of the problem, Rosłaniec seems to suggest, of older Poles being vastly out of touch with their progeny. When a tearful Ala asks her father for advice, he tells her to go to sleep. From her philandering mother, Ala learns either of two things: a) cheating on your lover is fine, or b) nothing. Her cynical teacher, meanwhile, strangles Ala's fledgling work ethic by announcing, "I'll throw away the tests that are an embarrassment to us all," and simply passes the entire class. In Snow White, Yobbo's mother is conspicuously absent, and we glimpse the author Masłowska's own "real" life: drab, unhappy drudgery both at home and at school.

Poverty also raises its squalid head: the financial promise of the EU is still a fairytale. Milena's friend Julia's desperate parents beat her, not because she's pregnant but because the young mothers' centre charges a fee. Julia's own financial goals have started so low, her friends have to lambast her before she demands her sexual "patrons" buy her what she wants – whereupon she finally scores that sparkling plastic ring she had her eye on. Ala's father can't afford tomato for his sandwiches, let alone a newer mobile phone to replace his daughter's brick. If her social status depends on it, then what's a girl to do?

These two arresting films seem to suggest young Poles are being exposed to all the lures and temptations of western consumerism, but without the crucial protection of an older generation wise to its dangers. Capitalism can be nasty: those rhinestone nails may glitter, but they sure ain't gold. It seems as if parts of the new EU Poland really are becoming more like Britain every day.

• The 8th Kinoteka Polish international film festiwal runs until 13 April at venues across London. Visit kinoteka.org.uk for details.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/mar/15/kinoteka-polish-international-film-festival/print

Just thought this might interest someone - don't hate on me if that's not you.

[garbon]

Here's my social commentary:

[Razgovory]

Wow.  Poland must really suck.

[Josquius]

Avalon was a cool film

[Syt]

I still need to pick up Stara Basn.

[Alexandru H.]

Someone please divide Poland again... 

[Barrister]

Someone please divide Poland again...

Since partition worked out so poorly for Prussia, Imperial Russia, and Austria-Hungary, no one would take it even if they offered.

[clandestino]

Wow.  Poland must really suck.

It doesn't. Don't let Martinus antics make you feel otherwise.