REVIEW - FLOATING SKYSCRAPERS (TOMASZ WASILEWSKI)

The push of the West and the pull of the East in the duelling mentalities of contemporary Polish citizens. Here is a country, not dissimilar to many others in Eastern Europe, struggling to choose which aspects of modernisation it wishes to foster, and which it wishes to dispel. Those who cannot dispel these aspects, for they are in their nature, may or may not find it easy to yield to temptation, but the easiest choice is faced by those untroubled by such concerns. They're not regressing, only finding solace in the increasingly vocal response to these increasingly public deflections to the truth, to the moral politics of the West, as it pushes Polish society, whether intentionally or not, out of its closet. Tomasz Wasilewski does not envisage a bright future for Poland's pariahs - his clean, rigorous mise-en-scene suggesting a country that has made significant strides to align itself with the modern world, yet simultaneously one stuck comfortably in the past. It's a trap, one born out of ignorance, but now enacted in vengeance against unwanted change. And his solution is pure tragedy, only stripped of its hysteria, so grim is his outlook. No-one wins, and those who had the potential to pursue a positive existence here end up the biggest losers. For a filmmaker with the nerve to stick it to the society he grew up in, and that proliferates today, and one not so prudish as to skimp on sexual detail, Wasilewski's approach is regrettably pedestrian. His chilly self-awareness and that tired steely colour palette aside, Wasilewski's grasp of the crucial emotional content of his narrative is desperately obvious. We await whatever minor adjustments he makes to it, and must relish them, for this film's trajectory is straight and narrow from the very start. Characters are one-note cliches, their motivations simple and straightforward, their decisions unrealistic, and Wasilewski's staging often melodramatic. There's so much to savour beneath the surface of Floating Skyscrapers; would that what floats on top of it be of equal interest.