A quirky noir comedy-drama from Poland. It is Warsaw in 1952, and Poland is under a Stalinist regime. Sabina, a woman perhaps around thirty years of age (played by Agata Buzek, showing her unusual beauty beneath the eyeglasses and the nerdy, clumsy demeanor of the character), lives in a crowded apartment with her mother and her grandmother (What happened to her father I believe is never mentioned). Her family is worried that she remains single despite her age and they keep presenting her dubious candidates. Just when her family is about to give up of matching her up with someone, a dashing stranger appears one night saving her when she was about to be mugged. They start dating, he seems handsome, masculine, articulate. But if he seems too good to be true, he is, because he has sinister plans towards her (I'm not going to reveal more of the plot here). Shot on black and white (with the exception of a few scenes happening in the present shot in color), with a good recreation of postwar Poland, perhaps the movie would have benefited from less stylistic flourishes. The performances by the lead Buzek and others (Andrzej Wajda regular Krystyna Janda plays her mother) is a plus.
Review of The Reverse
