Film review: 'Love Stories' Four 'Love Stories' and a Celebration
PALM SPRINGS -- Jerzy Stuhr, a great Polish actor who has made acclaimed films with Krzysztof Kieslowski, Agnieszka Holland, Krzysztof Zanussi and Andrzej Wajda, makes his ambitious second film as director a tricky but successful comic fable in which he plays four characters.
"Love Stories" is a visual delight and was a crowd-pleaser at the recent Nortel Palm Springs International Film Festival, but it faces tough competition as Poland's candidate for a foreign-language Oscar nomination. Still, the film deserves to go the select-site route domestically for savvy moviegoers unfazed by subtitles and nonlinear storytelling.
In each of the four short, engaging stories woven together like a cinematic quilt, a 45-year-old man is faced with unexpected turmoil and choices because of love: A university teacher becomes involved with one of his students, a sweet, pretty lonelyheart; an army colonel with a dreary life rekindles his passion for a former flame, a pretty Russian woman who then threatens his career; a teenage girl announces she is the daughter of a priest, forever changing his life; and, in his most colorful incarnation, Stuhr boisterously plays a passionate petty criminal in prison with an untrustworthy lover who lies to and blackmails him.
Stuhr, with the help of costume changes but no elaborate makeup, plays the four leads with subtle differences and broad strokes; he has rarely been more entertaining.
Inserted throughout are curious scenes in which the four men are interviewed by a pollster and reveal their feelings and convictions. The film becomes a morality play, in which some characters are punished and others are not, but Stuhr stays with a whimsical approach. His direction is superb, and excellent editing keeps the puzzle pieces smoothly into place.
LOVE STORIES (Historie mitosne)
Zebra Film Prods.
Canal Plus Poland, WFDiF
Credits: Writer-director: Jerzy Stuhr; Producers: Juliusz Machulski, Jacek Moczydlowski, Jacek Bromski; Director of photography: Pawel Edelman; Set designer: Allan Starski; Music: Adam Nowak; Editor: Elzbieta Kurkowska. Cast: Jerzy Stuhr, Katarzyna Figura, Dominika Ostalowska, Irina Alfiorowa, Karolina Ostrozna, Jerzy Nowak. No MPAA rating. Running time -- 87 minutes. Color/stereo.
"Love Stories" is a visual delight and was a crowd-pleaser at the recent Nortel Palm Springs International Film Festival, but it faces tough competition as Poland's candidate for a foreign-language Oscar nomination. Still, the film deserves to go the select-site route domestically for savvy moviegoers unfazed by subtitles and nonlinear storytelling.
In each of the four short, engaging stories woven together like a cinematic quilt, a 45-year-old man is faced with unexpected turmoil and choices because of love: A university teacher becomes involved with one of his students, a sweet, pretty lonelyheart; an army colonel with a dreary life rekindles his passion for a former flame, a pretty Russian woman who then threatens his career; a teenage girl announces she is the daughter of a priest, forever changing his life; and, in his most colorful incarnation, Stuhr boisterously plays a passionate petty criminal in prison with an untrustworthy lover who lies to and blackmails him.
Stuhr, with the help of costume changes but no elaborate makeup, plays the four leads with subtle differences and broad strokes; he has rarely been more entertaining.
Inserted throughout are curious scenes in which the four men are interviewed by a pollster and reveal their feelings and convictions. The film becomes a morality play, in which some characters are punished and others are not, but Stuhr stays with a whimsical approach. His direction is superb, and excellent editing keeps the puzzle pieces smoothly into place.
LOVE STORIES (Historie mitosne)
Zebra Film Prods.
Canal Plus Poland, WFDiF
Credits: Writer-director: Jerzy Stuhr; Producers: Juliusz Machulski, Jacek Moczydlowski, Jacek Bromski; Director of photography: Pawel Edelman; Set designer: Allan Starski; Music: Adam Nowak; Editor: Elzbieta Kurkowska. Cast: Jerzy Stuhr, Katarzyna Figura, Dominika Ostalowska, Irina Alfiorowa, Karolina Ostrozna, Jerzy Nowak. No MPAA rating. Running time -- 87 minutes. Color/stereo.
- 1/27/1998
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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