Hope

Ex-documentary filmmaker Stanislaw Mucha has assembled a fine cast for his debut narrative feature, a naturalistic, if far-fetched, moral parable scripted by Kieslowski’s  long-term writing partner  Krzysztof Piesiewicz.

Rafal Fudalej is Francisek, the ‘pretty boy’ son of retired conductor Ojciec (Zbigniew Zapasiewicz) who takes upon himself to spy on, bug and document the activities of a bent Warsaw art-dealer, filming him in the act of stealing a notable church altar panel (meaningfully titled ‘Angel with a Violin’) and fearlessly confronting the dangerous man with his evidence. With its mournful Bach and Max Richer score, it’s an earnest, deliberately mysterious film, soberly acted and nicely shot by Krzysztof Ptak, gentle on the Catholic symbolism, and less interested in its muted thriller elements than it is in mounting a slightly obscure meditation on moral rehabilitation.

‘Hope’ opens with the death of Francisek’s brother, and its refusal to spell out how  that connects with  dare-devil Francisek’s steelly resolve, his surviving brother’s descent into murder and his father’s into morose interiority, leave the film with an unsatisfactory air of unresolved  enquiry.