InRO Weekly — Volume 1, Issue 10

FILM REVIEWS
FUGUE
Agniszka Smoczynska
“Smoczynska’s camera makes estrangement its primary subject: When Alicja enters her parents’ home for the first time, the frame
stays tight on her, following her upstairs and through hallways, panning to reveal rooms as Alicja discovers them, presenting the
experience as alien and new. Fugue produces an abject disconnect between Alicja and her former identity of Kinga, and while there’s
little in the way of plot here, the struggle to uncover the reasons why she left this family in the first place keep the possibility of Fugue
becoming a thriller at the margins, infecting the film with an air of mystery that threatens to unravel the reconstructed domestic
scenario. The point throughout is clear: Smoczynska questions the contrivance of women’s roles in marriage and motherhood, using
amnesia to create that critical distance. The trouble is that Fugue never reaches beyond this conclusion, which it arrives at in its first
half-hour — and this thesis, in and of itself, is nothing new.” — CHRIS MELLO
DIRECTOR: Agniszka Smoczynska; CAST: Gabriela Muskala, Lukasz Simlat, Malgorzata Buczkowska; DISTRIBUTOR: Dekanalog; IN
THEATERS: March 10; RUNTIME: 1 hr., 42 min.
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