Piotr Dumula's "Lagodna" was adapted from the same source as Bresson's "Une Femme Douce" (1969)- Dostoevsky's 1876 story "A Gentle Spirit" (aka "A Gentle Creature", "A Gentle Spirit"). The film begins with the ticking of a grandfather clock, a woman lying silently in a bed and a man watching her. Dumala animates the story (using heavy plaster plates) with effective use of fades, close-ups, extreme close-ups, and morphing of materials (partway through the film a tablecloth is pulled by the woman; in a fluid movement it has become the bedsheet from the opening scene. At different times the hands of the clock move backwards - once, moving forward the hands morph into the man. The woman screams and her face takes on the likeness of the Munch painting. A buzzing fly landing on the woman's face in the first sequence re-appears on her face toward the end - she makes no response. The man slaps the fly on her face - the room begins to fade leaving the man by himself on a chair. The clock continues to tick as we fade to an empty room . ..
