To say that Fools is a film about the fracturing of a relationship when one member brings their sick adult son to live with them would be both completely accurate and almost as completely unhelpful. Tomasz Wasilewski’s new drama, his first film since 2016’s United States of Love, is also a frustratingly enigmatic mystery, a highly unconventional exploration of romantic and familial love, and a surreal almost-chamber piece taking place in a stultifying, windswept locale that may or may not really exist. Given the remit of Karlovy Vary’s new Proxima competition to showcase bold and unusual forms of storytelling, Fools should find itself right at home.
The film opens with a sex scene between Marlena (Dorota Kolak) and her younger husband, Tomasz (Lukasz Simlat). Shot in almost-out-of-focus close-up, it’s an intimate introduction that grounds the film in a tangible and familiar physical reality before Marlena gets up from the bed to answer her phone and their home is revealed to be directly adjacent to, possibly even floating on, a dark and roiling ocean. It’s like the end of days are lapping at their doorstep. The world Wasilewski and his crew – perhaps most notable in Oleg Mutu’s cinematography or Katarzyna Sobanska and Marcel Slawinski’s art direction – is a hyper-stylised and kitschy one that also feels authentic, faded, and lived in. Within its setting of a strange seaside town at the edge of the world, which verges on the unreal, the film places real bodies and real emotions. It creates quite an uncanny effect that permeates even the most unglamorous and humbling moments.
These come thick and fast once Marlena receives a phone call that seems to shatter the delicate equilibrium of her and Tomasz’s sheltered existence. She is summoned to collect her severely ill and estranged son, Mikolaj (Tomasz Tyndyk) from a clinic and must reveal to Tomasz that they had previously been in secret contact with one another. The precise reason that this would be so controversial is left unexplained, as is the exact nature of Mikolaj’s affliction, though he is now bedridden and unable to move or speak beyond a harrowing, guttural wail. When they bring him home the burden placed upon both of them, and their relationship, is immediately evident. They must wrangle Mikolaj into the shower, change his nappy, and suffer through his grunting anguish and pain. What also becomes evident in this sequence is that Marlena and Tomasz are in some form of self-imposed exile, reviled and shunned by Marlena’s family.
Much of the action is filmed in long, single-take sequences in which the camera keeps a relative distance from the performers. As hints are dropped and myriad questions begin to emerge about the history of this family, these slightly wider compositions allow for the audience to observe the physical affinities between characters, the way their bodies interrelate in the space – and the way Marlena and Tomasz’s bodies interrelate with Mikolaj’s – giving more indication of what is really going on than much of the dialogue. A moment in which Tomasz cradles Mikolaj’s head after he lifts him from the bath suggests an underlying affection that flies in the face of the snippets of exposition that the audience is provided with at a slow drip.
Equally perplexing is Marlena’s relationship with the landscape around her, the previously mentioned ocean – and the howling gales that whip it into a frenzy – seem to some extent to correlate to her emotional state, and she has a fear of entering the water that repeatedly tries to overcome and which is curtailed in several different ways. In her exile at the end of the world with Tomasz, the seashore feels like it might be the final liminal barrier stopping her from jumping over the edge, but her desire to do so hints at further turmoil underlying their companionship. As it becomes increasingly clear that things are not exactly as they have originally been presented and a potential explanation for this begins to be signposted, Fools’ more confounding narrative elements seem to fall into place. It’s interesting to consider the exact implications of the film’s title – perhaps it is a dig at those who have actively shunned Marlena and Tomasz and the nature of their relationship, or perhaps it refers to the couple themselves, attempting to hide themselves away on a desolate shore when it is clear that eventually, the results of their actions will come calling.
Director, screenplay: Tomasz Wasilewski
Producer: Ewa Puszczynska
Cast: Dorota Kolak, Lukasz Simlat, Tomasz Tyndyk, Katarzyna Herman, Marta Nieradkiewicz
Cinematography: Oleg Mutu
Editing: Beata Walentowska
Sound: Maciej Pawlowski, Ilja Koster
Art direction: Katarzyna Sobanska, Marcel Slawinski
Production companies: Extreme Emotions (Poland), microFILM (Romania), Achtung Panda (Germany)
Venue: Karlovy Vary (Proxima Competition)
In Polish
109 minutes
