A consummately surreal enactment of obsessive, unrequited desire with a dryly indulgent take on romantic love from Polish master Jerzy Skolimowski (Deep End, The Shout).
Surrealists rejoice. After almost two decades of acting and painting, the former enfant terrible of Polish cinema returns to Poland and the cinema.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2009
Four Nights with Anna 2008
Cztery noce z Anna
A consummately surreal enactment of obsessive, unrequited desire with a dryly ironic take on romantic love, Four Nights heralds the return after 17 years of Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski (Deep End, The Shout). He reveals his story cunningly and the most we should divulge is that it concerns a timid crematorium worker who drugs the woman of his dreams and creeps into her house to gaze at her while she sleeps. With its gallows humour, Gothic flourishes and its utter technical assurance the film recalls early Polanski and the fertile East European avant-garde of the 60s – with radically improved sound. Skolimowski acted in Eastern Promises and attributes his return to Cronenberg's insistence that strong personal expression can still prevail in the cinema. — BG
“A darkly romantic tale of obsession that courses with surprising tenderness, perverse humor and ravishing surrealist images.” — New York Film Festival