The Young Ladies of Wilko (1979)

Highly Recommended

Poland/France

Feature Film

Original Title: Panny z Wilka

Director: Andrzej Wajda

Writers: Zbigniew Kaminski, Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz

Cinematographer: Edward Klosinski

Cast: Daniel Olbrychski, Anna Seniuk, Maja Komorowska, Stanislawa Celinska, Krystyna Zachwatowicz, Christine Pascal, Zbigniew Zapasiewicz, Zofia Jaroszewska

Wajda’s quiet, gentle, elegiac tale - in which a doleful gent, following the death of a close friend (lover?), retreats to his aunt and uncle’s house in the country to recuperate, unearthing memories, both pleasant and painful, of the lazy summers of his youth, many of which involving the eponymous neighbours - is a subtle, moving, and subtextful account of the mourning for things past, present, and could have been. Iain.Stott