Cold War review: Black-and-white marvel exposes a flawed love

Charlotte O'Sullivan31 August 2018

In the mood for lust? Then prepare to be transported by this wryly sepulchral romance.

Poland, 1949. Zula (Joanna Kulig) is a babyfaced townie who blags her way into an ad-hoc academy for folk singers and soon becomes its star (her bosses are toxically keen to promote “pure” mountain maidens — Zula looks the part). She also impresses Wiktor (Tomasz Kot, deliciously restrained), a brilliant ethnographer and pianist who begs her to defect with him. For the next 20 years the pair criss-cross Europe, loving each other to death and unable to put down roots.

Kulig can really sing. In fact, her plaintive delivery of a traditional air will rip through your innards. And if at times she seems to be channelling Jeanne Moreau, Carol White and Liv Ullmann, that doesn’t make her a clone. Her body is capable of looking dumpy. She might be the most down-to-earth stunner of all time and thoroughly deserves a Best Actress award, though don’t hold your breath (in the whole history of the Oscars, only Sophia Loren and Marion Cotillard have won Best Actress awards for foreign-language films).

Cold War encourages us to see the world as parochial, cynical and corrupt. And, impressively, director/writer Pawel Pawlikowski exposes the flaws in his lovers, too. Under pressure in Poland, Wiktor turns out to be a self-serving wuss.

Even in Paris he is woefully ready to go with the flow (to titillate his bohemian friends, he exaggerates details about Zula’s past, behaving more like a pimp). And Zula? Well, let’s just say she’s not backward at coming forward once she’s had a drink. But do we want the couple’s relationship to work? God, yes.

Pawlikowski, as in his 2013 film Ida, works with cinematographer Lukasz Zal to create pristine black-and-white visuals. The film’s texture is extraordinary: an escape from the ugly that tips us into the real.

Only the climax feels portentous. Pawlikowski says Zula and Wiktor are loosely based on his parents, whose marriage was “complicated and disrupted”. Unlike the film’s lovers, though, the Pawlikowskis’ relationship petered out. The director (rather like Wiktor) exaggerates for effect, catastrophising an affair already bursting with colour.

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