Starring: Lena Góra, Michał Balicki, Wacław Warchoł
Directed by: Olga Chajdas
Rating: ★★★★☆
Traditionally the strenuous task of bringing alternative cultures above-the-ground on the screen has been devolved to documentary cinema. But it is not always the case. In Imago the Polish director Olga Chajdas did not ask Lena Góra to recount the troubled life of her mother and art performer Malwina until Lena came to existence. In her second feature film, the Poznań-born filmmaker, in fact, successfully urged Lena to impersonate Malina during the years preceding the end of Communist regime in Poland.
In the Eighties Malwina nicknamed the Cosmic Mother was an underground sensation in the Baltic seaport of Gdańsk. Imago, does not include homages to any artists in particular other than Lena’s mother — “Zakaz kapięli”, a fictional indie music joined by Malwina, was created only to be appear in the film. In Imago, nonetheless, Chajdas rewardingly captured the thirst for personal expression and the anarchist vein of a generation of artists who turned their back on both the Community authorities and freedom fighters of Solidarity labor union.
The mother-daughter confrontation, reenacted through a reversed role in Góra’s heart-and-body wrenching performance, offers a tremendous gift for the viewers in Imago. Not surprisingly, Lena Góra was the recipient of a Best Actress Award at the Polish Feature Film Festival in Gdynia. The collapse of Communism and road to victory of Solidarity, that had been initiated in Gdansk shipyard, is pushed to the background in Chajdas’ dark but vibrant one-hander. Imago conjures up 3 years in the life, with more downs than ups, of a Polish quick-change underground performer who suffered from bipolar disorder.
The film title alludes to the final stage in the development of certain insects when they reach sexual maturity. The Cosmic Mother eventually appears to enter the motherhood stage after a careless pregnancy. Post-partum baby blues has never been portrayed so sharply in Polish cinema. Malwina is shown to love her baby, but at the same time, to detest all that follows childbirth. Enriched with Tomasz Naumiuk’s atmospheric cinematography, Imago is a vodka-fueled trainspotting-esque and hard-hitting cinematic ode to alternative culture in Poland when the toppling of Communism was just around the corner.
Film Reviewed by Giuseppe Sedia
Published by Kino Mania on January 19, 2024