ILUZJA/ ILLUSION

Poland, 2022, 89 minutes, Colour.

Agata Buzek, Marcin Czarnik, Malgorzata Hajewska.

Directed by Marta Minorowicz.

A brief Polish film that requires attention from its audience, and attentiveness, a patient attentiveness, contemplation of characters.

The basic plot is very simple: a primary school teacher and her husband are grieving because of the disappearance of their daughter. The police have made investigations but have no leads. The couple have visited the last known site where their daughter was seen. They have consulted quite a number of clairvoyants. The mother is seen at class with young children, the image of a forest being one living thing, one root, thousands of trees coming from it. The children sometimes must behave one having a picture and asking if this is her daughter. The teacher is upset that apologises.

At home, she is rather taciturn, payments for the clairvoyants, the husband becoming more exasperated, finally, at the site of the disappearance, a clairvoyants suggesting that the husband killed his daughter, he storming off, upset, later going to the police, suggesting that he confessed some become a suspect so that the case remain open, but he has a heart attack and stroke and dies.

The teacher visits the detective in charge, female, who is more empathetic.

At times, the teacher is desperate, going to the club her daughter used to visit, meeting with a friend who has been in Peru and does not know of the disappearance, then dancing rather wildly. She also catches sight of her daughter’s secret boyfriend who runs away, later visiting her, explaining that he was drunk, and she explaining that she knew their secret. She also meets a woman, rather wild, with the violet coat resembling that of her daughter’s, but she runs away.

The teacher also rummages around the house the couple used to live in when the daughter was a little girl, finding an old photo, intruding on a house, questioning the mother of the house who turns out to be death, her son interpreting, but getting no leads for her investigation.

The teacher also has dreams, interpreting them as revelations – and, toying with buttons which match her daughter’s coat, eventually bearing them in the sand on the beach. Finally, again because of a dream, she starts to dig up another site on the beach, finding a jacket, the police coming, digging, the audience wondering whether the teacher had actually killed her own daughter, when it is revealed that it is the body of a young man.

Later, a woman comes to the house, thanking the teacher for finding her dead son, they’re both embracing, the teacher finally gazing at the camera.

The performance by Agata Buzek is quite powerful, mainly communicating her interior anxieties.