Pokuszenie
Poland,
1995, 101 min
Shown in 1997
CREDITS
- dir
-
Barbara Sass
- prod
-
Miroslaw Bork
- scr
-
Barbara Sass
- cam
-
Wieslaw Zdort
- editor
-
Maria Orlowska
- cast
-
Magdalene Cielecka, Olgierd Lukaszewicz, Krzysztof Pieczynski
- source
-
Telewizja Polska S.A./Poltel International, J.P. Woronicza 17/POB 211, 00-999 Warsaw, Poland. FAX: 48-22-44-02-06
OTHER
At once deeply personal and pointedly political, Barbara Sass’s The Temptation is a finely crafted drama of moral choice and forbidden love set in post–World War II Poland. In the early 1950s, during a period of strict Stalinism, Anna, a young nun, is offered release from prison on the condition that she collaborate with the Security Service. Her assignment: to gain the confidence of a popular priest in an attempt to obtain incriminating evidence of his anti-government activities. But when Anna is taken to the desolate location where she is to meet him—and betray him—she discovers that she may not have been chosen at random for the task. That same priest had played a critical role in her past and had a strong influence on her decision to enter a religious order. Their interaction is full of still unresolved currents and tensions. This precarious situation isn’t helped by their confinement. Each charged exchange between them takes place under watchful eyes: those of another priest and of Polish guards and their commander, an officer of the Security Service whose own dedication to his job appears ambiguous. The Temptation is graced by the acting of newcomer Magdalena Cielecka as Anna. Her emotionally charged yet subtly nuanced performance full of radiant passion and dark intensity won her best actress awards at several international film festivals.
—Rachel Rosen
FACTOID #107
Incubus, the only known film made in the Esperanto language (at least the only one starring William Shatner), played the 1966 San Francisco International Film Festival.
