Set on the noisy fringes of Poland’s 1980s post-punk music scene, when new freedoms were emerging just as Communist rule collapses, Imago is a compelling story of bohemian rhapsodies and personal agonies. For writer-director Olga Chajdas, it began as a discussion with her star and co-writer Lena Góra about fraught mother-daughter relationships, but it developed into a far more personal passion project with the Polish-born, LA-based actor playing her own mother on screen. Ela Góra, aka Malwina, was a feted rock singer until the birth of her daughter in 1990 sidelined her nascent pop career. Fresh from its world premiere in Karlovy Vary, this hot-blooded coming-of-age bio-drama should play further festival encores, with the music angle a potential promotional hook in the right hands.
Imago takes place in the Baltic shipbuilding city of Gdansk during the volatile late 1980s, with mass rallies on the streets, Solidarity challenging a sclerotic Soviet puppet regime, and Poland cautiously embracing free elections for the first time in over 40 years. But Ela (Gora) is too consumed by her own bipolar mood swings to take much interest in politics. A mentally fragile young woman from a large working-class family, Ela is a hot mess, bouncing between psychiatric wards, arty parties and rowdy rock concerts. One day, she spontaneously climbs onstage to perform with a local band, rivetting the audience with her banshee wails and stream-of-conscious poetry. A natural born diva with strong artistic impulses, she has found not just a cathartic creative outlet but also a welcoming alternative family.
Ela’s chain-smoking ice-queen charisma bring all the boys to the yard, including unwelcome sexual harassment from strangers on the street. Torn between two lovers, earnest Tomek (Mateusz Wieclawek) and glamorous bad-boy painter Stach (Michal Balicki), her life becomes a boho whirl of sex and drugs, rock shows and gallery openings, wild swimming and naked sunbathing. But her growing fame on the local music scene causes confusion at home, and tension with her mother (Boguslawa Schubert), especially when she falls pregnant. Facing a stark choice between a free-spirited artistic future, or marriage and motherhood, takes a heavy toll on Ela’s mental state.
Góra’s depiction of her loose-cannon mother is unvarnished, but nuanced and sympathetic. She clearly knows this milieu intimately, including some of the real-life characters and extended family members portrayed on screen. Born to a singer mother and painter father, Góra grew up around musicians and performance artists, including Thierry Mugler’s long-time partner Leon Dziemaszkiewicz, partying in graveyards and industrial warehouse spaces. Her relationship with Ela was fractious, leaving Poland in her teens to pursue her own creative career in London, New York and LA. But this film is ultimately a heartfelt love letter from daughter to mother, emotionally raw yet tender. The final scenes, featuring a baby version of Góra herself, have a bittersweet sense of closure.
Chajdas shoots Imago in stylishly grainy, grungy palette designed to invoke the vintage VHS look of 1980s music videos. The plotting is a little baggy and receptive in places, as Ela’s life becomes a rambling series of shows, parties and boozy meltdowns. Plus smoking. Endless, endless smoking. Late 1980s Poland looks like a giant ashtray at times. A little more narrative rigour and psychological depth would have been welcome here. Messy lives do not always require messy films. That said, Tomasz Naumiuk’s whirling, kinetic camerawork has a freewheeling rock’n’roll energy that suits the material.
Music is woven deep into the fabric of Imago, of course, and crucial to its dramatic authenticity. Recreating historical rock scenes is a tricky balancing act that film-makers often get wrong, but Chajdas and her team do a persuasive job of capturing the crackling, spontaneous, rowdy energy of live performance. The songs, mostly composed by Polish rocker Andrzej Smolik and performed by the cast, are impressively visceral, tinged with gothic melodrama and confrontational tension, invoking the post-punk aesthetic without succumbing to bloodless movie-world pastiche. A finely curated background soundtrack featuring real 1980s cult bands including the Residents, Einstürzende Neubauten and the impressively obscure London duo Rexy lend an extra layer of forensic period accuracy.
Director: Olga Chajdas
Cast: Lena Góra, Boguslawa Schubert, Michal Balicki, Wojciech Brzezinski, Mateusz Wieclawek, Waclaw Warchol, Lukasz Orbitowski, Justyna Wasilewska
Screenplay: Lena Góra, Olga Chajdas
Cinematography: Tomasz Naumiuk
Editing: Pavel Hrdlicka
Art director: Anna Anosowicz
Music: Smolik
Producers: Izabela Wójcik, Violetta Kami?ska, Dariusz Jab?o?ski
Production company: Apple Film Production (Poland)
Venue: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Proxima Competition)
In Polish
113 minutes
