When we start off Pawel Pawlikowski's film Cold War, we are treated to a barren wasteland: Poland during the postwar period. The country has gone through major upheavals: its population was ravaged by the war and the holocaust, its borders were changed by Churchill, either for his own political gain or to appease his wartime allies, and its people are scattered and recovering from this trauma. The film then posits: what kind of love can blossom from this ruin? The answer is, it seems, the tragic kind.
Zula (Joanna Kulig) and Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) are both rebellious and free, though they work as cultural performers in a Mazurka troupe. They quickly fall in love with each other, though it's clear that they're both profoundly broken in the inside. The rest of the film plays like tracks in a record, skipping forward in time and showing scenes and vignettes of their life together, as they try to reconcile their broken selves. It's a tumultuous, tragic tale, told beautifully through Pawlikowsky's mastery of the mise en scene. It's further accentuated by the film's boxy frame, as if to trap them together for life, unable to act against forces beyond their control. And in a way, their love story is the story of postwar Polish identity: a struggle to heal and reconcile conflicting ideologies in the postwar recovery period, struggling to gain their own sovereignty under Soviet influence. The greater political cold war that goes on around them reflects their own, internal cold war.
The film goes through its bleak yet fascinating motions, accompanied by a soundtrack of jazzy beats and folk music. Later in the film, these folk songs are reinterpreted through jazz, a reimagination of songs that define the Polish ego. The film eventually endsdecades before the end of the People's Party, but there is the promise of something greater. There is the promise of togetherness, but only through rebirth, revolution and further upheaval.
Cold War works on many levels, as a bleak love story, or as a greater examination of a country in healing.
One particular curiosity with the live action adaptation of Itoshi no Irene is its English title: Come on Irene. It's a play on words, coming from the title of Dexys Midnight Runners' 1982 single Come on Eileen (the two are pronounced virtually the same in Japanese.) In that song, a man continually asks a woman named Eileen: 'You in that dress/My thoughts I confess/Verge on dirty.' In the context of this film, it takes a different, and slightly disturbing, turn.
Based on Hideki Arai's 1990's manga series, Itoshi no Irene is about Iwao Shishido (Ken Yasuda), an unkempt, socially inept man whose life mainly consists of working in a pachinko parlor and jacking off to porn at night. It's understandable why he hasn't gotten far with any of his attempts at a relationship. In his frustration (mainly for sex), he heads to the Philippines where he scores a bride, Irene (Natileigh Sitoy), much to the consternation of Iwao's overbearing, elderly mother.
Most of the first half consists of this comedy of cultural incompatibilities. It's funny, and a little sweet at the same time. One could almost gain a little sympathy or goodwill for Iwao's character at this point. But an event near the middle, and the subsequent events that follow, takes all that goodwill away. Because of that event, Iwao acts out with infidelity and deviant behavior, making him truly one of the most unlikeable characters in contemporary cinema.
I was ready to dismiss the film until I realized that the true focus of the film is on Irene, and the film stands as a stark indictment of Japanese society, criticizing its rigid adherence to old ways, or its deeply ingrained sexism and racism, or the societal pressures on sex or marriage, or the international class divide that allows arranged marriages and mail order brides to happen. Irene is the sole sympathetic character in the film, who only wants to earn money for her family. She genuinely wants to fall in love with Iwao and make their relationship work. She is a far more complex individual than her husband or in-laws make her out to be. Though portrayed as an airhead, she's playing the long game, and is genuinely the kindest person in the film, forgiving horrible people for horrible actions. It's seen in the cultural differences between the Japanese and Filipino views on infidelity, or parenthood, with one culture putting filial piety above all else, while the other takes that piety to such pragmatic extremes that leaving parents to die on the mountain for the sake of the larger family is a reasonable option.
This film will likely not please everyone thanks to the direction it decides to take during its latter half, but there's a message behind the chaos of the film, and it's quite a ballsy thing to say, considering the Japanese are putting themselves on a stage, and the picture they paint isn't flattering at all.
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