The Polish Bride

Netherlands 1998

Reviewed by Charlotte O'Sullivan

Synopsis

Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.

Anna, a young Polish girl, is discovered bloody and bruised by Dutch farmer Henk. He takes her in even though he has worries of his own - he's trying to secure a bridging loan, having failed to keep up payments to the bank. Under Henk's care, she gradually blossoms and a friendship and sexual attraction develops between them. A young man arrives asking for Anna, but Henk sends him away. Henk and Anna are by now in love, although Anna continues to sleep in the spare room and still misses her little daughter Krystyna to whom she is able to write and from whom she receives pictures. The young man reappears, accompanied by an older man; they are Anna's employers, demanding money in return for her release from her "contract". They say they'll return the next day.

The bank decide not to give Henk a bridging loan. When the men return and find Henk won't pay them they beat him up. That night, Anna gets into his bed. The next day, the men return. Henk shoots the older man and Anna plants an axe in the younger one's head. Henk buries the bodies and Anna departs, leaving behind one of Krystyna's pictures. Some time later, she reappears with Krystyna. Henk is overjoyed.

Review

The Polish Bride begins, like so many thrillers, with a beautiful, scantily clad woman in distress (it soon becomes clear she's not wearing knickers) and a thumping soundtrack. Soon, she's tumbled into the life of a bachelor farmer and is lying naked in bed, a breast half-exposed, with the farmer looking on, warily entranced. The tension is supposed to lie in the contrast between her interior world, blasted as it is by memories of rape in a hotel room (predatory men, foreign space) and her new exterior one (a potentially predatory man, undoubtedly foreign space). Her horrified moans and spasms link the two, the experience of these flashbacks lending an almost orgasmic glow to her features. Will the farmer aid her or abuse her?

It's a tension The Polish Bride exploits rather than explores. Anna's emaciated face, dark bedraggled hair and perfect flesh are pure Dazed and Confused fashion spread, a vision of victimhood free of ugliness or inhibition, a titillating fantasy of vulnerability. Neither the rapists' nor the farmer's viewpoint appears aberrant, because Anna's only function is that of a sexual object. Most insidious of all, Henk comes off as saintly just because he doesn't make a move on her.

But once Anna opens her eyes her realness is impossible to ignore. With her fierce boy-soldier bones, Monic Hendrickx, like Sandrine Bonnaire, knows how to convey the strangeness of the gender divide. Growing in confidence, Anna begins dressing like a woman, but the transformation is never quite complete - she looks at one moment like a duchess, the next a drag queen. That her foray into femininity begins with Henk's (dead) mother's wardrobe merely adds to the Norman Bates feel of these scenes. In order to awaken Henk's adult sexuality (and her own), Anna must entangle herself in the repressive past. The whole geographical area (Northern Holland) is caught in this conspiracy. Shopping trips become a source of great pleasure to both Anna and Henk, but all their new clothes look like dour 60s stuff. If Anna discovers a keen, sensual 'otherness' within herself, it's in spite of this culture's rigidly defined sexual norms.

The scenes between her and Henk grow in subtlety. As Anna begins to learn Dutch it's his discomfort with the language that becomes apparent. Bending over her shoulder as she looks through her dictionary, he huffs and puffs with diffidence, correcting her like a man extracting a loved one's teeth. His twin desires paralyse him - he wants to tear Anna away from her Polish identity but at the same time preserve a silence which protects him. His emotional need for her is palpable: When Henk watches Anna, his breathing is audible on the soundtrack. He's so absorbed, he doesn't realise his carefully bottled insides are escaping right under his nose.

The danger for the film, at this point, is that Anna will simply turn into that stock figure, the outsider who brings a little fun into the life of a good-hearted but crotchety loner. But the use of the Dutch land and light keep the film grounded. Inside Henk's dark home, the camera moves with a sea-sick rhythm, squashed and squeezed between heavy tables and chairs. By contrast, when fixed on white light pouring in through curtains, or acres of soil sitting under low, low skies, the camera is blissfully calm. Refusing to be hurried, Algerian-born director Karim Traïdia drags us into the mushroom-coloured heart of this landscape and makes us love it. Showing Anna his family album, Henk proudly talks her through a photograph with his father and "the new tractor" as if it were a part of the family, and what could have been a joke at the country-boy's expense, here makes perfect sense. Having kept the predictable at bay for so long, however, Traïdia finally succumbs. As the two strands of plot collide (the bank refusing Henk money, Anna's employers - obviously pimps, who have lured her to the country with false promises of work - demanding it) it all falls horribly into place: the cruel, bureaucratic banking system is the flip side of the blackmarket, both city-bound organisations wielding bits of paper that force good people to take the law into their own hands.

In interviews, Traïdia has talked about his inspiration for the film being his childhood memories of farmers, who "were so simple, so kind". This is the sentimental language of the fairytale and that's what The Polish Bride becomes. Anna's pimp employers are utterly evil so we feel nothing when they're killed. More to the point, Anna commits her purging act without consequence. A false sense of urgency is injected by making us think the deaths will break the couple apart (we see Anna putting the mother's clothes back in the wardrobe) but the ending is a happy one, with the symbolic family reunited.

It's a real pity, because Henk and Anna were shaping up to be fascinating characters. Imagine Tess of the D'Urbervilles cut short before Angel Clare's misogynistic weakness had been exposed; imagine Tess' murder of Alec D'Urberville going unchallenged. Or, to bring things more up to date, imagine Will It Snow for Christmas ending with daddy home to stay and a big knees up round the fire. These portraits of agricultural life may tend towards the sadistic, but Traïdia's bypasses pain altogether. It's worth noting that The Polish Bride has won a great deal of prizes (seven international awards in all). Clearly, fairytales are what judges want.

Credits

Producers
Marc Bary
Ilana Netiv
Jeroen Beker
Frans van Gestel
Screenplay/Idea
Kees van der Hulst
Adaptation
Karim Traïdia
Director of Photography
Jacques Laureys
Editor
Chris Teerink
Art Director
Anne Winterink
Music
Fons Merkies
©Motel Films/IJswater Films/VPRO
Production Companies
IJswater Films and Motel Films with VPRO in association with Stichting Nederlands Fonds voor de Film/Stichting Co-Produktiefonds Binnenlandse Omroep/Stimuleringsfonds Nederlandse Culturele Omroepproducties
Production Manager
Judith Reuten
Location Manager
Erik Moesker
Assistant Directors
Casper Thiel
Michael Shabtay
Script Supervisor
Nana Jongerden
Casting
Hans Kemna
Job Gosschalk
Betty Post
Scanning
Valkieser Capital Images
Special Effects
Arthur van Oest
Costume Designers
Daniëlle van Eck
Monica Petit
Costumer
Hajé Mars
Hair/Make-up
Lida van Straten
Monique Mierop
Title Design
Image Creations
Musicians
Piano:
Liduine van Dijk
Cello:
Hanneke Hoogerwerf
Clarinet:
Karin Wilschut
Drums:
Wim Konink
Music Recording
Hans Ravestein
Studio Groenland Bussum
Soundtrack
"t' Hoogeland" by Ede Staal; "Stabat Mater, Op. 53 (for Solo Voices, Mixed Choir and Orchestra)" by Karol Szymanowski, performed by Polish Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Stanislaw Wislocki, soprano: Stefania Woytowicz; "Zamiast" by W. Korcz, M. Czapinska, performed by Monic Hendrickx
Sound
Eddy de Cloe
Sound Editor/Mixer
Marco Vermaas
Agricultural Advisers
Jan Duisterwinkel
Klaas Frik
Dog Trainer
Dick Schuur
Cast
Jaap Spijkers
Henk Woldring
Monic Hendrickx
Anna Krzyzanowska
Rudi Falkenhagen
father
Roef Ragas
son
Hakim Traïdia
postman
Soraya Traïdia
Krystyna Krzyzanowska
Eyce
Henk, the dog
Certificate
15
Distributor
Artificial Eye Film Company
8,042 feet
89 minutes 22 seconds
In Colour
Subtitles
Last Updated: 20 Dec 2011