Polish Cinema: Fugue (Agnieszka Smoczynska, 2018, Poland/Czech Republic/Sweden)
Fugue
is a more conventional turn from Agnieszka Smoczynska, following her wild
genre-melding The Lure (2015). The premise of a person who returns home
after a period of memory loss has been used in many films before, and so as an
audience we automatically have certain expectations about how the plot of this film will unfold before watching. This lack of novelty places the film at a
disadvantage in comparison to The Lure, however Fugue ultimately
stands on its own.
The
film opens with an excellent scene – our protagonist, Kinga, arising seemingly
out of nowhere from subway tracks, and urinating on a subway platform,
causing passers by to flee in disgust. This scene introduces a major motif of
the film – that Kinga has left her domestic life and become animalistic and
wild. Gabriela Muskala conveys this sense of wildness in her appearance and demeanor.
Once she is reunited with the husband and child she left behind, we feel almost
as if she is an animal that cannot be tamed. She walks around the house without
pants on, offending her parents when they visit.
For
the first half of the movie, there is a suggestion that Kinga’s disappearance may
have a supernatural aspect to it. Smoczynska seems to suggest this with scenes
interspersed that show Kinga sleeping in the forest. Gradually it becomes
apparent that the cause of her disappearance was based on a domestic dispute. This is
perhaps the film’s main weakness – it leads the viewer on with the expectation
of something out of The Lure, but ultimately the film is far more of a
kitchen sink drama.
If
the film is perhaps a bit of a let down in terms of the plot, Smoczynska still
manages to keep things engaging. The film is permeated with a sense of gloom,
from the blues and grays that dominate the color palette, to the framing of
Kinga’s house – set against an isolated country landscape that seemingly goes
on forever. Smoczynska also shows the knack for using music that she had in her
prior film, especially during a dance sequence between Kinga and her husband at
a restaurant that feels completely otherworldly.
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