Young urban Poles Wanda (Zofia Chabiera) and Jan (Marcin Sztabiňski) are suffering from marital blues.
It might be summed up by a depressed Wanda at a bar with Jan saying she wants to board an airplane and fly away, get morning drunk on tequila and have someone fuck her over a kitchen sink and it doesn’t matter with whom and one expects Jan to text her with messages like buying wieners and trash bags. About the only thing that makes Wanda in her relationship with Jan happy is being able to fit a cauliflower in a pot.
Jan, less expressive and more reserved than Wanda, simply can’t determine what Wanda wants or makes her tick.
Jan proposes and Wanda accepts they set out on a 400-kilometer winter hike along Poland’s Baltic coast trailing belongings with provisions in sleds along sandy beaches and camping out with minimal interaction or contact with civilization. As Jan states, “We aren’t going to fall in love again by sitting on the couch.”
Off they commence their marital odyssey with Jan setting yet another rule stating if they can’t make the trek they will end the marriage.
Be prepared for spectacular cinematography along the wintery Baltic coast. At moments one can’t but help thinking of similarities of the wintery Baltic coast with the desert of “Lawrence of Arabia” . Crashing waves, snow, greyness, sunsets with almost all humans encountered eccentrics like the hermit living in a trailer or the very drunk man with tomato seedlings he asks Jan and Wanda to deliver to his mother. It is almost as Wanda and Jan are explorers in a virgin land discovering its beauty and hopefully themselves.
Thrust and parry they go not making any ostensible progress with their crumbling relationship. Every advance made is countered by a set back.
The rules “of a perfect relationship” are after all “rules” aren’t they? Stereotypical and far from custom made for “real relationships”. Wanda believes her rules should rule the roost but will she waiver when Jan says to her, “If I am in a prison, you are the crack that let’s the air in”?
If there is any prison here it would be built brick by brick by Wanda’s expectations but with prisons there are always prison breaks.
You can watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNcBcLHlUPo&t=2s
The director is Maria Zbąska.
The film screens 18September2025 in New York at the Biannual Kino Polska Film Fest.
RKS 2025 Film Rating 87/100.
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