Monday, February 11, 2013

The Polish Bride

I watched The Polish Bride based on a Netflix suggestion and I found it oddly compelling. It's a Dutch film (English subtitles) and very different from most other films I've seen. There's very little dialogue, a surprise for a character-focused drama, and the soundtrack is understated. The lack of dialogue is certainly a statement by the director, but it's also a natural outcome of the basic plot: the two main characters do not speak the same language until the woman learns Dutch. With so little dialogue, we viewers are left to figure out what is happening, to interpret the clues, and in some cases, to decide for ourselves what happened and why.

At the pivotal point in the action, the couple did not react the way I expected, enough to make me wonder if the film had a fatal flaw. Maybe so, but people often react in surprising ways in real life.

There is an Australian version named Unfinished Sky featuring the same lead actress from The Polish Bride. Unfinished Sky won multiple 2008 Australian Film Institute awards. I haven't seen it yet.

If you are looking for a film that is out of the ordinary, give this one a try.