11/09/2021 - VENICE 2021: Polish helmer Ola Jankowska embraces slow cinema and makes a case for having a selective memory, especially when it comes to past mistakes

Shown in the Giornate degli Autori at Venice, Ola Jankowska’s Anatomia [+see also:
trailer
interview: Ola Jankowska
film profile] is an interesting, if not exactly fast-paced, take on memory and family, and the memory of a family. One that, in the case of her protagonist, at least, has already faded a bit – Mika (Karolina Kominek) hasn’t seen her father for many, many years. She is a grown-up now, albeit not necessarily a happy one, even though there is some kind-sounding man on the phone, missing her. When she comes back to Poland to visit her dad, suffering from a severe brain injury, old wounds predictably make a comeback. Although one suspects they have been festering under the surface for quite a while anyway.

There is one twist to the story, however: instead of getting a confrontation that’s long overdue and probably much needed, Mika realises that her father doesn’t remember that much. He remembers the better times and clings to them, basically, convinced that she is still in her teens and living at home, which is where he would rather be going as well. His insistence on just wiping out a huge chunk of time does something to her, too: she starts to reach out to the ghosts of her own past, be it an old lover or a man who, as she tells him, was her very first love. It feels like a big statement, but instead of showing any reactions, Jankowska’s camera looks out of the car window, indifferently perhaps, knowing that words won’t change anything. It has just been too long. All of the emotions here are very subdued, actually, with Kominek – hair tucked childishly behind her ears – acting a bit in slow motion all through some very long takes.

It’s not exactly a criticism – it is what it is, and there is some familiarity to the greyness of it all, so beloved by Polish dramas of late. Instead of closure, you get awkward silences. Instead of a passionate embrace, a brief touch, as if to check whether the person standing right next to you is really, actually there. Jankowska makes a patchwork of digital shots and old VHS tapes, for example, the kind of family films everyone of a certain age still stores in the basement, getting blurrier and gradually disappearing, just like the memories they were supposed to be guarding forever. By doing so, she travels back and forth in time with this woman, not exactly sure where she belongs or where she would rather stay.

Reportedly based on a very similar, true story, this film seems to wonder whether it’s bliss to remember, or maybe it is to forget. Meeting someone who has become a stranger, Mika can literally take a look inside of her father’s head. There is some fascination that comes with it, with being able to “dissect” an absent parent, discover all the secrets and even past injuries, but it won’t erase the past anyway. Maybe real bliss means to just let it all go, as advised loudly by a certain Disney film.

Anatomia was produced by Poland’s Opus Film, and co-produced by France’s Kometa Films and Poland’s EC1 Łódź Miasto Kultury, Canal+ Polska, Opus TV and Coloroffon.