Sztuczki – Andrzej Jakimowski’s wonderful film about a small Polish town.
Christina Bylow

The pigeon loft is open, but the pigeons sit motionless – as if they don’t understand they’re free. A boy shakes a stick at them as he’s seen his grandfather doing – but no luck.

What can you do to make human beings do what you want them to?

Stefek (Damian Ul) is seven and is taking his first steps on the road called manipulation... or magic.

Will the lead soldiers placed between the railway tracks or the coins scattered on them make his father came back home? Because he left the family for another woman. Maybe the commuter who waits on the platform every day is his dad? Elka (Ewelina Walendziak), Stefek’s much older sister shouts at her brother: “There’s no Dad! I’m your sister and your father”.

And then she shows him a few tricks which might help fate. Elka loves her younger brother but is strict with him, the way that older siblings are when they have to take responsibility for brothers and sisters.

Sztuczki is not, however, a film for children – like the films of Louis Malle, where children occasionally take the main roles. Children in children’s films are usually awkward figures because they have to personify the adult directors’ long since discarded fantasies, exaggerated to suit the demands of the market. Adventure, magic, megalomania. Always seizing – vampire-like – the emotions of the young viewers.

Children like Stefek come from another world. From memories which are still alive, with all the pain, cunning and faith they have in themselves. They are sceptical, mysterious, tenacious, incorruptible observers of the world, who notice every detail, but don’t judge.

Stefek’s world is a nameless, small Polish town.

It’s high summer, the dusty light drifts across the eyes like a filter. In his novel Dukla, the writer Andrzej Stasiuk used the blunt expression “outer space” to describe the Polish provinces. The images in Andrzej Jakimowski’s film are both sensual and precise, but not distorted by some sort of saccharine poetry. It is the second film by the 46-year-old director, who cast highly talented amateurs to play the ill-matched brother and sister in Tricks.

His small town looks just like Zgorzelec – the Polish side of the German Görlitz – no lifting here. It ain’t Hollywood. Mud-grey facades cheek by jowl with new garish neon signs, streets full of potholes. And on the outskirts, Elka’s dream future – an Italian investor has put up a glass office building on waste ground.

Unfortunately Elka misses her chance. Her brother’s obsession flusters her and she loses track of time.

Each of the subtly interlinked characters interact with the stranger. Elka’s boyfriend, Jerzy (Rafał GuŸniczak), can’t fix his wheelless car, the buxom girl-next-door drops all her shopping and the man loses his briefcase. Finally, the stranger goes into their mother’s shop. Is that the return of the prodigal father? Did the tricks really work? Andrzej Jakimowski keeps the answer to himself. Because children love to think up their own endings.

online :
http://www.berlinonline.de/berliner-zeitung/archiv/.bin/dump.fcgi/2009/0723/feuilleton/0032/index.html