Cycle index

Wherever You Are

dir. Krzysztof Zanussi / Poland, West Germany 1988 / 104’

subtitles: Polish and English

retrospective: Krzysztof Zanussi A Plane from Budapest, Anxiety, Attestation, Behind the Wall, Camouflage, Cement and Words, Face to Face, Family Life, Girl and Uhlan, Hipothesis, Holden, Illumination, Imperative, In Full Gallop, Inventory, Krzysztof Zanussi – Essential Conversations, Life As a Fatal Sexually Transmitted Disease, Long Conversation with a Bird, Mountains at Dusk, Persona non grata, Revisit, Spiral, Stop Thief, Students, The Balance, The Bluebeard, The Catamount Killing, The Constant Factor, The Contract, The Death of a Provincial, The Lady with the Ermine, The Lame Devil, The Power of Evil, The Role, The Roof, The Silent Touch, The Structure of Crystal, The Tram to Heaven, The Unapproachable, The Year of Quiet Sun, Time That Passed, Umbrella, Ways in the Night, Wherever You Are, With a Warm Heart, A Woman’s Business, Deceptive Charm Section index

Cast

Julian Sands, Renee Soutendijk, Maciej Robakiewicz, Tadeusz Bradecki, Joachim Krol, Maja Komorowska, Andrzej Łapicki, Aleksander Bardini

Film description

The plot was inspired by an event the director heard about from Dr Kaczanowski, the director of the Tworki mental institution during the shooting of The Illumination there. It is set in Poland just before WWII. The main characters are foreigners: Nina and her husband Julian, the honorary consul of Uruguay who manages several factories and visits the homes of Polish aristocrats. Speaking of Nina, a mentally ill woman who dreams of sanctity, Zanussi touches on his favourite themes: the dual nature of man, the dichotomy of body and soul, the opposition of good and evil, the contradiction between nature and culture, and closeness of insanity and holiness.

Beautiful people, elegant surroundings - the baroque style of the film resembles the work of Visconti. You can clearly sense the creator's perspective, so typical for Zanussi's co-produced films of the 1980s - the cool look of a cosmopolitan.Villages, with dirty children and other motifs exotic for a civilised man from Europe and the elegant scenes of the life of Polish aristocracy alike - everything is drawn roughly, as if looked at through the window of a Western limousine.

Mirella Napolska