17 APRIL 2008
Trouw


It's a wonderful thing to see a Polish movie where the sun breaks through the clouds, and where we go out together with a blond boy just to watch the world going by. Polish cinema was long dominated by Krzysztof Kieslowski, but he is dead now. And Polanski, who however has been mostly directing glossy international co-productions set (except for the Pianist) everywhere but in Poland.

For a long time there wasn't much after Kieslowski and Polanski. But now there's Jakimowski. The Polish director who made his debut five years ago with the small festival hit 'Squint Your Eyes', has now taken the time out to make his second feature film, 'Tricks'.
It is a breathtaking, fresh and fantasy-filled story of a Polish boy in a Polish provincial town in whose company we stay during the summer months. We are with him when he tests his toy soldiers by placing them between the rails to see which soldier can best resist the onslaught of the incoming train.
'Tricks' is a movie about 'looking'. Stefek looks at his older sister, who gets on her friend's motorbike. He studies a man on the platform who he thinks is his father. He observes two farmers selling apples and asks himself, why did one farmer sell all his apples, and the other one, standing a few feet further on, none. What can you do to change your destiny, Stefek wonders, and can you give chance a nudge?
The Polish boy Damian Ul plays Stefek with a distinct natural appeal, you see him frowning and thinking. Why do doves fly when an old man snaps his finger, and not when he does it? At the end of the movie he suddenly finds the answer, and then you know this is the question that all the time he's been thinking about.
'Tricks' is full of beautiful, small, sparkling observations, through Jakimowski's movie sometimes resembles the work of one of cinema's greatest names, Jacques Tati.

Jakimowski has the same sense of the absurdities of daily existence. He does not proclaim his findings from the rooftops, though, but shows them almost off-hand like small silent miracles. At last, come to think of it, it's summer in Poland, and a fine spring has broken in Polish cinema.
Belinda van de Graaf, Trouw

http://www.trouw.nl/achtergrond/Dossiers/article1750593.ece/Tricks___Jakimowski_rsquo_s__rsquo_Tricks_rsquo__zit_vol_mooie__grappige_observaties.html