![]() ![]() If the most vital work of the 2010s has made one thing clear, it’s that movies have never been more things to more people than they are today. And while the decade will no doubt be remembered for the paradigm shifts precipitated by streaming and monolithic superhero movies, hindsight makes it clear that the definition of film itself is exponentially wider now than it was a decade ago. Cinema is in a constant state of flux, but it’s never mutated faster or more restlessly than it has over the last 10 years. Perhaps the arrival of James Cameron’s “Avatar” in the waning moments of 2009 could have been seen as a harbinger of strange things to come, but no one in Hollywood has ever lost sleep over a movie that grossed nearly $3 billion. DVD sales were strong, Netflix was still just a sad little envelope at the bottom of your mailbox, and China was starting to give studios the biggest safety net it ever had. It came with the added benefit of making the people in charge comfortable with the idea that cinema’s future wouldn’t look all that different from its past. That idea was inflexible, and supported by a century of precedent. But amid the occasionally surreal, dreamlike images and the cyclic, stoner rants, there is a atmospheric account of a young man’s quest for self-expression – the need to say something, even if he isn’t yet sure what it will be.Ten years ago, it seemed like we all had a pretty solid idea of movies - what they can do, who they’re for, and where they’re watched. This is not the kind of film which takes its characters on a neat arc of development. His conversations are at cross purposes and his search for meaning amid all the cigarettes and glitter face paint is thwarted. Wide-eyed and striking, with looks that veer between chiselled beauty and gangly awkwardness, Kris seems increasingly lost. Michal, who clearly still holds a candle for Eva, withdraws from Kris’ life, leaving him to negotiate alone the ‘ant hill of vanity’, as one character memorably describes the city’s club culture. The friendship between Kris and Michal is put under strain when Kris falls for Michal’s ex-girlfriend, the charismatic and idiosyncratic Eva (Eva Lebeuf). This is a generation that is not concerned with Warsaw’s past history and lives entirely, intensely in the present. Marczak’s camera weaves woozily through the throngs of dancers, our view of the scene is appropriately tipsy. The film meanders through seemingly endless nights against a backdrop of pulsing techno and snippets of hazy conversation. He makes a loose pact with his friend Michal (Michal Huszcza) to live life to the fullest, embracing every experience that it throws at them. Kris (Krzysztof Baginski) has just split up with his long-term girlfriend, contributing to the 17 hours in total that he estimates he will spend on break ups during his entire life. One wonders just how many recollections the central characters of this odyssey through house parties, raves, clubs and strung out mornings after are actually going to accrue, given the vast quantities of drugs they get through. The film opens with a definition of the term ‘Reminiscence bump’ – a psychological concept which refers to the tendency for older adults to have increased recollection of events that occurred during their adolescence and early adulthood. ![]() A shared spirit with French New Wave and the film’s formal daring will recommend it to cineaste festival attendees, however broader theatrical prospects might be somewhat hampered by the fact the ideal audience for this material – young people of the same age group as the main characters – are not the most likely punters to venture this far into experimental arthouse waters. Though perhaps low on insights, this is an evocative portrait of a brief, intense window of hedonism, self discovery and Olympic levels of self-indulgence experienced by young people on the cusp of adulthood. The director of Fuck For Forest creates an evocative portrait of a brief, intense window of hedonism for young friends in Warsaw In technique, if not the milieu, the film has some similarities to the approach employed by Roberto Minervini fo r Stop The Pounding Heart and The Other Side. Staged sequences and reality are so meshed together that it’s impossible to unpick which is which. Director Michal Marczak ( Fuck For Forest) cast the real-life characters, who play themselves, and then worked with them to develop a narrative for the film. Inhabiting the blurred hinterland between documentary and fiction, this hypnotically aimless journey through a year and a bit in the lives of a pair of young friends in Warsaw defies neat categorisation.
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