A Short Film About Love (1988)

A Masterpiece!

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I saw an Indian version of this movie but it was erotic to me.But after watching this movie,i realized how romantic the story could be.This movie expressed the true love,affection,feelings of the boy tomek brilliantly.Also revealed how much a teenage boy devoted and obsessed to his true love who was much elder than him and not having a good character,he didn't care about it.Also he didn't care about how his daily life and time were affected for his true love.In the end of the movie when magda realized how much he loved her,she felt very depressed and found her true love.Her feelings to the boy was very touchy in the last scenario. Though the ending was not clear to me,as what happen,did tomek die or something else,but the making was very brilliant and extraordinary.Director Krzysztof Kieslowski was very successful to express every romantic expression of this movie.The acting of tomek and magda were excellent,touchy and romantic.

The screenplay is written from the pov of a twenty-something, overly-sensitive boy/man who sometimes succumbs to masochistic tendencies. And written for same. Story is about an average looking, withdrawn, personality-less 19 year old male who obsessively voyeuristically watches an attractive, mature and sexy woman in various stages of undress and in various sexual positions with a boyfriend. Thwock, thwock, thwock. In a not-to-be-believed circumstance (well, it IS his fantasy after all!) young man gets physically close to the woman, has his hands moving up her bare thighs.....but before he gets to the prize......has a premature orgasm. Thwock, thwock, thwock, thwock. Neatly and virtually painlessly punishes himself for this by cutting both wrists with a flimsy double-edged shaving blade (more self-inflicted pain but photographed in a beautiful, melodramatic, theatrical way). (Cue violins.) Survives the attempt and then rejects the she-devil he so previously desired. (In an interview on the disc the actress tells how the original ending had the kid coldly repudiate the woman. Very telling this ending because, you see, he triumphs over her and "that'll show you, now that you're interested in little old boring me! Or as Groucho said, "I wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member!) Climax!

Nowadays love stories involve a traditional trajectory of boy meets girl and then moves on to "important" events or dates so finding this is like stumbling upon the needle in the haystack(no negative connotation intended). This movie manages to look past all the bs and straight to the point, raw love, building your life around it, and risking it all for it. Nowadays the protagonist would probably get labeled as "stalker" because that's probably how we've been raised to see these things. What i loved about this film is how is its attempt(which i think is successful) at destroying this correlation between love and sex. The Krzystof Kieslowski is no random director, and although the shots themselves are nothing spectacular, the way the movie flows together is and the music used matches the tone perfectly. The acting is spectacular, the main two characters are really believable and you really feel them develop. Though this movie is easy to recommend to everyone(who is of age), i would say only those with an open mind will be able to extract meaning from it.

"A short film about Love" (Dekalog Six) is a movie which can be best described as "A guy , a girl and a telescope but not in that order" (Courtesy :Jean Luc Godard).This movie is one of the best movies ever made ,describes the emotional storms in the teens , the hopeless promiscuity of a middle aged woman , the apparent peculiarity called love , all in a nutshell , just in a span of one hour. Tomek , a 19 year old boy , spies on his middle aged neighbor Magda , who is an artiste by profession . Tomek's friend goes abroad giving him the telescope to spy on "promiscuous" Magda with the suggestion "She spreads it around". Tomek , like any confused teen fails to express his love in the proper way and in turn gets hurt in love .Magda introduces him to her very own world of physical pleasure without any presence of the emotions Tomek possess. Kieslowski introduces the viewer to a brutal world marked with absence of love. The movie begins depicting Tomek's attraction towards Magda , his moist eyes finding a man on Magda's flat with his telescope and the movie finishes focusing on Magda ,her understanding of love , perhaps in the same language Tomek wanted to tell her. The uniqueness of the movie lies in the last scene. Tomek declares to Magda , that he's not spying on her anymore . Magda is surprised at first , apprehends it as Tomek doesn't love her anymore , but the next moment she smiles softly , reassuring herself about the strength of love she came to know in her life. This movie , Kielowski's masterpiece is worth to watch , with brilliant acting from Grazyna Szapolowska and Olaf Lubaszenko.The scenes of Tomek and Magda meeting in a restaurant , or when Magda introduces Tomek to her body , or Magda's loneliness and her painful and patient wait for Tomek to get back from hospital are classic examples of movie making and are more poetic than other practical elements in the movie. In short, this movie can be described as a must watch for any lover of movie making and any person ever in love .