A Short Film About Love

Olaf Lubaszenko in A Short Film About Love

Part of his Dekalog, Krzysztof Kieslowski's A Short Film About Love , from 1988, flips Rear Window on its lid, portraying the backlash resulting from a young man's voyeurism. Tomek ( Olaf Lubaszenko) watches swinging single Magda (Grazyna Szapolowska) from afar by telescope. Magda's libertinism is joyless and she is more intrigued than repulsed when the young man begins stalking her. Orphaned Tomek is a budding sociopath, poorly integrated with his adoptive family. 

Tables are turned when Magda humiliates Tomek sexually (while being spied on by his adoptive mother) and Tomek attempts suicide. Kieslowski masterfully builds up to the confrontation between his two antagonists, but fails in his portrayal of Magda's psychological make-up, As in A Short Film About Killing, Kieslowski is adept at portraying the mind of a warped male lost in the anomie of urban Poland. With his female lead, Kieslowski loses his bearings. 

Magda at her lowest is pictured weeping over spilled milk, a too obvious signifier of onanistic waste. Magda seems neither perverse enough to toy with Tomek, nor compassionate enough to be able to eventually identify with his suffering. Magda is an underdrawn character that prevents this film from ranking with Kieslowski's best. Still second rate Kieslowski is better than most and the Criterion restoration on disc provided the best looking Kieslowski print I've seen.