Love Stories

Written, directed by and starring Jerzy Stuhr in four different roles, this morose comic fable interweaves the stories of four inhabitants of Krakow - a lecturer, an army officer, a priest and a drug smuggler - to mount a subtle exploration of the diverse roles played by love in contemporary life. It's a movie about fear, guilt, cowardice, responsibility, trust and betrayal, but despite occasional forays into allegorical fantasy, it mercifully never sermonises or descends into maudlin sentiment. Ingenious, insightful and finally rather touching. (Dedicated to Krzysztof Kieslowski, for whom Stuhr regularly acted.