29.10.2008


DIDIER STIERS


Watching the trains passing by at the train station with his older sister is not enough to find his father. Stefek (Damian Ul) needs to give his luck a bit of a helping hand too. © D. R.

The aura of Jakimowski is not yet that of Wajda or Zulawski. But his “Tricks” is promising.

INTERVIEW

So their plumbers did not make it to eclipse their directors, after all! And luckily there comes someone who knows how to take the things with philosophy. But that’s natural; Andrzej Jakimowski is a philosophy graduate. Still he ended up behind the camera, having finished studies on radio and TV production. After that he made a few shorts, some documentaries and prize-winning debut in Poland. Now he moves and makes one smile.

With Tricks, a history of a boy determined to regain his father who abandoned him, his mother and his older sister Elka.

When asked, if he will be all right when people learn about his feelings, he answers half modest and half amused that he will be ok: “I have nothing but movies to show. I make them for my friends, sometimes for my family... And with a bit of luck other people will also want to watch them.”

To what extent Tricks is autobiographical?

I had in my mind a few moments from my own childhood. They were good memories and I wanted to revive them.

And you needed to find a boy, who would incarnate you...

It was truly the most difficult part – finding a child to fit in the role of Stefek. We had a camera casting for about 400 children and we did not find one. Still that was the most important. I was a bit desperate. And then we came across that boy, who lived in the town where we were to shoot, in southern Poland. Actually, it was him who found us. He spotted our team while we were looking for the locations on the streets. It was a real stroke of luck!

You explained to him that he was to become... you?

I did not have to tell him anything at all... because he’s very intelligent. I did not even have to discuss much with him. He grasped the main idea, the relationship that his character had with the man who was suspected to be his father. He lived a similar kind of situation: his father made his own life elsewhere, his mother is a shop owner too, meat shop, not the groceries, but still, he also has an older sister.

Talking about luck, that’s what makes your story evolve; do you trust in it as much as Stefek?

No. Many things are already determined in our lives and it’s really difficult to fight with that. But we can succeed. Obviously, we do not always get what we want. And sometimes we are lucky not to get it. You know, I am the director, producer and screenwriter of this movie. I invested quite a lot in it and it’s me who takes the risk, so the opinions on this movie mean a lot to me. But Tricks did not change much in my life. And it was not the aim here.

The music fits the images perfectly...

I work together with my friend and composer (editor’s note: Tomasz Gassowski), who was present on every or almost every stage of the works. When I was writing the screenplay, I discussed my ideas with him. He was present on the location when we were shooting. He started to register the music on his mobile. Later, we had many long discussions on the instruments, mixing...

The music underlines the melancholy a bit, doesn’t it?

That was the aim.

Did you make a melancholic movie?

No… But melancholy makes part of live, it’s important. You cannot laugh or be happy, if you are not sad from time to time.

Is this typically Polish or East-European view on mixture of feelings?

I do not know... The Poles are romantic and happy. Romanticism is Polish, just like Chopin is.


Tricks

A small industrial town, sad train station, a boy and his older sister. The boy, Stefek, is 6 years old. Elka is 18. “I am your mother and your father in one”, she tells him often. Their mother is at home; their father left them some beautiful day long time ago. But Stefek thinks he recognized him at the train station. A well-dressed man with briefcase in his hand... But then, he needs to make sure it’s him. And attract his attention without scaring him away. It is just enough to know how to help the destiny. Then, logically, the chain of events unwinds...

With a bit of melancholy Andrzej Jakimowski puts together small pieces of life. Stefek and the stranger, Elka and her boyfriend, Stefek’s constant efforts to make pigeons of an old pigeon fancier flee, the seductive, teasing neighbor… All of them combining into a partially autobiographic story, thus immersing in nostalgia, but also, and that is what makes Tricks most appealing, in the sunshine and a sort of calm confidence in the future. From the technical side, one should notice the full style work of DoP (Adam Bajerski) and the soundtrack under the influence of Balkan music (Tomasz Gassowski). Enough to get carried away…

online version:
http://www.lesoir.be/culture/cinema/cinema-sortie-ce-mercredi-de-2008-10-29-655516.shtml

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[translator’s note] A hint at the expression “Polish plumber” made popular in France during the campaign preceding the constitutional referendum, later on used by Polish Tourism Agency to promote Poland abroad.