Category: World Cinema
Language: Polish
Director: Malgorzata Szumowska
Running time: 90 minutes
Body does a lot of corporal talk—it talks of anorexic body, disjoined body, disembodied souls—and spirals into one big problem with a ‘who can find answers’ tag.
Featured in the world cinema section, the film takes many routes and ends up at the threshold of where things were left off.
There are three prominent characters—a father, who is also a busy prosecutor, Olga, the daughter, who’s anorexic and grieves the loss of her mother by hating her father, and Anna, a therapist who believes in her own theories of healing.
While the father-daughter duo battle out their unresolved issues with indifference and silence, the therapist comes into picture. Her ways are unconventional, and she claims to re-etablish contact with the deceased. The father being a sceptic doesn’t give in to the psychic vibes sent out by her. The daughter too isn’t quite convinced that her mother wants to contact them. But there are others who have found solace through the messages that Anna delivers to them, when the dead talked to her, she claimed.
The film is an interesting take on relationships that thrive due to many puzzling factors. Even though some details remain fragmented, it brings out an altogether different outcome than what was expected. It ends ambiguously, not making it clear whether Anna was right about her belief amid the father’s cynicism and daughter’s doubts strangely making them resolve their problems.
A well-narrated story that could have curbed its running time, Body isn’t poignant or path-breaking, but it sure amuses; bodies of belief, conviction and uncertainty assure to throng the human minds for as long as we can see.