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PJFF REVIEW: Little Rose (C)
Aside from glimpses at historical context, Jan Kidawa-Blonski's political motive seems to get hidden beneath a steamy triangular love plot.
PJFF REVIEW: Little Rose (C)
[ C ] Little Rose (Róźyczka) was chosen for the Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival for its political and religious commentary on 1968 Poland. The film takes place directly after the Six Days War, a conflict between Israel and Arab forces, which inspired a wave of riots and protests among Polish youth and intellectuals alike. Director Jan Kidawa-Blonski uses this backdrop to present the ways in which Poland’s communist government suppressed academic progress and prosecuted communist dissenters, especially those of Jewish heritage.
The film makes subtle reference to the ignorance of Polish government officials to handle the riots appropriately, as their prosecutions were haphazard, anti-Semitic and without concrete evidence. But aside from this mere glimpse at the historical context for the film, Kidawa-Blonski’s political motive seems to get hidden beneath the steamy triangular love plot among a stern security colonel, Roman Rozek, his girlfriend, and the colonel’s target, Warczewski, a respected Polish intellectual, writer and professor. The historical context gets hidden so well, in fact, that audiences without prior knowledge of communist Polish history might just miss it.
At first, when the colonel decides to use his girlfriend, the irresistible Kamila (Magdalena Boczarska), as a pawn to spy on Warczewski and prove his Zionist loyalty, he does not predict the consequences on both his government office and his bedroom.
Kamila, in her suggestive alias, Little Rose, agrees to follow Warczewski and seduce him into a false trust, but it soon becomes clear to Kamila that not only is Warczewski completely clean, but he is far more capable of providing her with the affection and appreciation that she never received from parents or previous lovers. The Colonel, Rozek holds on, often violently, to Little Rose — now but a thorn in his heart.
While the war-of-the-Rose holds viewers' attention better than the under-developed sister plot of anti-Semitic Poland, neither seem to reach a satisfactory climax. We leave the film wanting to know more about the student riots, the breakdown of communist Poland, and the new fate of Little Rose.
Nov. 6, 7:30 p.m., $10 Bryn Mawr Film Institute, 824 W. Lancaster Ave., 610-527-9898, gershmany.org/pjff.
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