"Cold" Is Correct
by J.T. Kolness
Pawel Pawlikowski is quite a visionary director, managing to craft a unique framing style with his last film, the Oscar-winning Ida (2014) and now Cold War. His unique use of muted black-and-white filtered, 4:3 aspect ratio framing and sticking the subject toward the lower half of the screen beautifully captures a sense of loneliness and quiet fragility for its central characters as the rest of the scenery around them seems to loom about a sense of emptiness. His characters search for a sense of belonging. Why am I here? Where do I fit in? How do we fit in together? The soft lighting he uses glosses a blanket of sensitivity over the stories he chooses to tell. It's very easy to grasp that Pawlikowski loves the films he's making and wants you to love them too. Ida was a very easy film to warm to. Cold War proves otherwise.
Joanna Kulig and Tomasz Kot are our two star-crossed lovers in a story set in post-war Poland where Kulig's character Zula meets Wiktor. Wiktor's job is to recruit talent and travel around communist territories to promote and perform and Zula is the musical subject that he falls madly obsessed with. Their affair lasts over a decade as the film hops around in a series of vignette chunks, usually taking place in a different year and a different country, as these characters grow together and apart, lusting and feuding, as their careers take them in wildly different directions. Zula and Wiktor are based on Pawlikowski's real-life parents (who are thanked in the text at the close of the film) and for a film so personal to Pawlikowski, it's odd that his way of telling this story seems so impersonal.
The film wants us to believe in the passion these two share for each other, but it's clear that they are also just destructive with one another. Pawlikowski's brief running time is thankful, but it also causes the story to really skim over developing their love story in a fluid way. It's clear that Pawlikowski is very inspired by French New Wave cinema, possibly early Goddard, but some of that style goes a long way. At times, he feels so inspired to create such languid images, matched beautifully with its wild array of music choices ranging from jazzy orchestra to moody choral pieces, the actual story takes a backseat. He works so personally with his cinematographer, the brilliant Lukaz Zal, that Cold War feels more like a film to watch as a collection of striking film imagery than a story worth telling.
Many may disagree, but the vapidness of the writing only distances us from these characters, who seem to create many of their own problems through stubbornness and careless infidelity. Kulig is a strikingly interesting actress, with soft facial features and expressive eyes. She's a stunning talent with a knack for selling honest emotion and heated passion. Much of that passion fails to be reciprocated by her costar Tomasz Kot, whose often blankness fails to really light up enough chemistry between the two actors. Kot is fine in the film, and has enough expressive moments towards the end, but there seems to be this odd disinterest with his own character. The film wants us to believe there is a lot of firey passion between these two, with their sharp back-and-forths and tightly-groped lip smacking, but there is much to be desired in the quieter moments where it doesn't feel like we get enough understanding between the two of what makes them such a pair.
Admittedly, the film ends in an oddly laughable manner, leaning heavily into artsy tropes that modern film students in college cinema courses are bound to ridicule. It starts with such confidence but never fulfills its promise of being the heartfelt and passionate love story it promotes itself as. It's a hollow shell stained with a lipstick kiss. It's easy to get lost in Pawlikowski's visual eye, but his heart seems lost along the way.
"Cold War", an Amazon Studios release, is rated R for some sexual content, nudity and language. Running time: 89 minutes. Two stars out of four.
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