Télérama 22.10.2008


STEFEK (DAMIAN UL) YOUNG ENCHANTER OF HIS QUITE INSIPID WORLD

TRICKS
BY ANDRZEJ JAKIMOWSKI
A small hand carefully deploys a tin soldier between two rails. If it falls, it's lost. A train goes by: it’s won! The toy is still upright, hardly moved on the wooden tie. That’s the little magic omnipresent in Tricks, the second film by Andrzej Jakimowski. In a small Polish town, a bit squalid, but flooded with the sun, Stefek, a ten-year-old boy, plays at hide and seek with destiny: all alone close to the railroads, in a town park, close to the carrier pigeons, the kid tries to enchant his banal, even miserable world with little poetic objects, with small everyday bets. His older sister, Elka (Ewelina Walendziak, local Scarlett Johansson), who taught him these tricks, is a serious and icy fairy bringing him up alone with their mother. At the station Stefek thinks he recognizes his father, who left a long time ago. Built around the little light-haired kid, a young actor Damian Ul, the film seeps with limpid tenderness, nonchalant charm and healthy balance between a tale and a daily chronicle. Will he come back or he won’t? The pussyfooting of Stefek’s father, watched from the distance by his sorcerer's apprentices of children, calmly evokes the work of Kieslowski on chance and destiny. Andrzej Jakimowski played well in this game. CECILE MURY

(Sztuczki).Polish (1h32). Screenplay: A. Jakimowski. With Damian Ul, Ewelina Walendziak, Rafal GuŸniczak