Starring: Bien De Moor, Lars Eidinger, Annemarie Prins
Directed by: Urszula Antoniak
Rating: ★★★★☆
We will never know if the shower scene that makes up Code Blue’s epilogue would have softened the judgment of those scandalised audience members who walked out of its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Interestingly, when the movie was shown at La Bocca, a few kilometres down the road, the reaction was entirely less flustered. The climactic shower scene, featuring 50-year-old Bien De Moor, has been read as redemptory by some, but suggests a sensual celebration of the human body rather than a cleansing of sin.
Netherlands-based Polish director Urszula Antoniak has proved that she has no fear of the consequences of radicalising her cinema, given its very deliberate implementation. The fugitive banshee in Antoniak’s Nothing Personal (2009), which won a Golden Leopard for best debut at Locarno, limits herself to announcing the death of an Irish hermit widower, but in Code Blue Dutch nurse Marian personally brings death to her terminally ill patients with lethal injections.
After just two films, a wide range of motifs is already evident in Antoniak’s work. Her fascination with small, personal items, such as used combs and condoms, and the profound solitude and laconic attitude of her characters evoke the cinema of Kim Ki-duk. With two critically acclaimed co-productions abroad, Antoniak deserves the attention of Polish producers and their money.
Originally published by The Krakow Post on February 23, 2012