A Year of the Quiet Sun
Director: Krzysztof Zanussi
Year Released: 1984
Rating: 1.0
If you're writing a screenplay, and you want to have two characters meet, and not sure how to do it, and end up deciding, "They'll meet when the male character unzips his fly in front of the female character so he can urinate; after he's done he can realize there's a woman there and feign embarrassment and try to apologize," aren't you trying too hard? Don't you look back at that a day or two later and go, "Hey, that's stupid?" Well, Zanussi never went into the questioning stage. He also neglects to make the core relationship in the film - that of an American soldier 'falling in love' with a Polish widow - remotely plausible; the appeal of him for her and vice versa is more or less assumed. The two characters are one-dimensional - he's honest and she's weary - and the denouement is more silly than affecting. I did learn, however, that if you want to make a Polish woman laugh uncontrollably, make sweet pork for dinner. Guaranteed chuckles.
