Hi, Tereska

Czesc Tereska; Drama, Poland, 2001; D: Robert Glinski, S: Aleksandra Gietner, Karolina Sobczak, Zbigniew Zamachowski, Malgorzata Rozniatowska

Kids are arguing and accidentally hit a girl's head with a stone. Her older sister Tereska (15) copes hard with her life in a poor town: she wants to become a fashion designer and gets a job in sewing factory. Somebody steals her money but her friend Renata borrows her a part of the material for the dress. Tereska constantly goes to visit the drunk Edek who is in the wheelchair and who wants to kiss and seduce her. Tereska's father is also always drunk who once destroys the elevator with an axe. Renata learns her how to smoke and consume alcohol, even finding her a boyfriend. He rapes Tereska and she takes out her rage on Edek.

Extremely pessimistic and anxious elegy "Hi Tereska" about meaningless life, shot in black and white, won a lot of awards in it's homeland Poland, but too often resorts to portray the teenage life in a one dimensional and passive way. Director Robert Glinski queues the events set in a bleak city in a rather arbitrary way: some kids accidentally hit a girl's head with a stone; tie tin cans onto a cat's tail...Also, the depressive heroine Tereska isn't described especially well, but she shows some welcomed outbursts of cynicism when she glues a "Stop Aids" chard to the butt of her evil boss or in the scene where she asks her father this the day after he demolished an elevator with an axe: "What's wrong dad? No more will to run amok?" It's an ambitious social drama about the lack of sense in human existence, but not as inspiring as let say the similar "Stroszek".

Grade:++