11 SEPTEMBER 2008


Tricks
Poland
Directed by Andrzej Jakimowski

Transports us back to our childhood, telling a warm story.
Review by Vegard Larsen
vla@dagbladet.no


FILM: There's nothing much happening in Tricks by Andrzej Jakimowski.
However, nothing much is happening when you're nine years old and on summer vacation, with no peers around, your mother works as a shopkeeper and your sister is busy with making herself up most of the time. Simultaneously, a flowing brook, a tin soldier on guard, a strange man on the platform, a flock of carrier pigeons, carrying no letters, and your elder sister with her motorcyclist boyfriend are interesting enough. Indeed, these things are interesting enough as each of us was nine once, playing with sticks in the backyard, peeping at the neighbors, running around on the hot asphalt, and staring at the passing freight trains.

Wind rustling in the hair
The film by Andrzej Jakimowski is like a short story by Johan Borgen, it brings back the forgotten feelings to us: the wind rustling in our hair on our first motorbike ride, day and night lasting endlessly, cool nights brisk with dew, pebbles in our shoes, and scratched knees.

The language of the film is more observational than narrative, and Jakimowski builds up the scenes slowly, without irrelevant means of dramatic expression.

Top shelf
The story is outstanding, and the actors - with the 9-year-old Damian Ul at their head - represent the top shelf acting. There is not much dialogue in the movie, which does not burden its plot. This causes that the experience is even more fascinating, more personal, more magical.

There is nothing much happening in Tricks, the story of the longing boy told by Andrzej Jakimowski. Yet what is happening is enough.

online version:
http://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/2008/09/11/546467.html