IDA – The Review

The new drama IDA concerns a young woman seemingly eager and prepared to forge ahead and continue on her life’s journey, a trip she has been certain of for most of her existence. But, as is often the case, one must first re-trace your steps in a way to see the beginning of the road, n order to continue on with no qualms or regrets. As the film opens we meet a girl on the verge of adulthood living in a convent in Poland at the beginning of the 1960’s. Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) will soon be taking her vows and fully join the sisterhood, but first the Mother Superior sends her on a task. Anna was raised at the church-run orphanage since she was an infant. Anna’s only living relative, an aunt, has not responded to invitations to visit her niece. Before the ceremony, Anna will board a bus for a nearby city and meet her only kin. When she arrives at her aunt’s apartment building the next morning, Anna is nearly brushed aside by a man hurriedly leaving the place. That man was the previous evening’s entertainment for Wanda (Agata Kulesza), a hard-drinking, chain-smoking local court judge. Wanda informs Anna that her birth name is Ida, and her parents were Jewish (and killed during the occupation of World War II)! The surly Wanda dismisses her visitor and tells her to head back to the convent. But after a day hearing cases and a look through the old photos, Wander changes her mind and races down to the bus station. Seeing the young woman waiting on a bench, Wanda tells Ida that she will drive her to her birth village where they will find out what exactly happened to her parents and locate their grave site. They hit the road for a journey that will be one of discovery for Ida and of regrets and past horrors for Wanda.

So, basically this is a two-person road trip drama with the oddest of couples. The beautiful Trzebuchowska pratically glows on screen with her headpiece making her look as if she just stepped out of a Vermeer painting. Her face is nearly a blank slate that acts as a screen for the people she encounters to project their feelings and fears upon. For some she’s scorned for her simplistic beliefs while others plead to be given a blessing from her. It’s the more passive role which aids in magnifying the bravado work of Kulesza as Judge Wanda, who enters a scene like a bull in a china shop. No tip-toeing around for her, she interrogates with the ferocity of a pitbull, with each question a bludgeon to get at her prize, the truth. But it seems the more she learns, the more vulnerable this force of nature becomes, oozing her life-force as she re-opens old, scarred-over wounds. Wanda never completely opens up to her niece as she saves her smiles for those men hovering around her at the bar. Yes, it is the flashier of the two roles and Kulesza knows it. She brings an urgency, a vitality, to every scene and is the film’s fiercely beating heart.

Director Pawel Pawlikowski guides these women expertly through the dreary cold landscape, made even more bleak by the superb, stark black and white cinematography and lack of music score. He composes the scenes like an illustrator with the actors often occupying the bottom third of the screen, dwarfed by the run-down buildings and barren trees, the fates staring down at these mere mortals. Despite the somewhat downbeat subject, the film is briskly paced at a taut mere 80 minutes with no padding or fluff. The end of the journey and its aftermath will surprise and stun. For some of the characters, the truth does not set them free. A powerful and engaging drama, IDA is a haunting tale sure to linger long after you return to the Technicolor world.

4 Out of 5

IDA opens everywhere and screens exclusively in the St. Louis area at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinemas