A sublimely shot monochrome homage to 1950s European film, Cold War is an impossible tragic love story – a sad ballad of time and place across (east/west) frontiers.
With music the setter of moods (from traditional Polish peasant music to freeform jazz), Oscar-winning writer/director Pawel Pawlikowski focusses on the intimate within the narrative as a magnificent Joanna Kulig sings her way to fame in 1950s Poland. A product of a post-war communist youth organisation, it is there she meets Wiktor (Tomasz Kot), music conductor at the folk-music academy. A doomed love affair from Warsaw to Paris, Berlin to Belgrade unfolds over the next 20 years.
Like the story itself, Cold War is starkly beautiful, its intimacy cold, its emotions constrained, distant. An intimate epic.
Nominated for 3 Oscars in 2019 – best foreign language film, director, cinematography.
Rating: 84%
Director: Pawel Pawlikowski (Ida, Summer of Love)
Writer: Pawel Pawlikowski (Ida, Summer of Love) Janusz Glowacki (Billboard, The Cruise)
Main cast: Joanna Kulig (The Innocents, Elles), Tomasz Kot (Bikini Blue, Gods), Borys Szyc (The Mole, Snow White & the Russian Red)
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