pariscope 22.10.2008

Tricks Every morning, when the trains take in the commuters, a 10-year-old Stefek watches them leave from the train station in his town. His mom runs a local grocery with a helping hand of his older sister, a 17-year-old beauty. Everything the little boy wants is that his father, who left, undoubtedly on a business trip, comes back home. One morning Stefek spots on the platform a man, who’s different from all the others. A little wandering kid and his dreams; old, noisy motorcycle on a trip with some loony, small tin soldiers deployed by a child's hand on the railway, awaiting the carriages to go by; beautiful young blond, the Fellini type, on her high heeled shoes, who’s marching on the sunny sidewalk, ignoring men and awaking the first adolescent emotions in the boy. That’s what the Polish summer is proposing. Andrzej Jakimowski films with sensibility two adjacent worlds: the heart of the inhabitants of Polish little town and the universe of trains which go by it, omnipresent and poetic, from the very beginning until the end of this beautiful story. All that with seductive music, like Italian barcarole. A different Poland on the big screens; a very rare thing.■ Arno Gaillard [drama] by Andrzej Jakimowski