P. Lozinski: You Have No Idea How Much I Love You

A couple of weeks ago I wrote articles for the Krakow Festival newspaper. One of them had the headline “Lozinski” and was about father and son, Marcel and Pawel. I saw that there was a new film by Pawel in the program, I had not seen it when I wrote the enthusiastic words about the two – later I read that he received an award in the National Competition for “You Have No Idea How Much I Love You”, I have watched the film with the beautiful title, it is amazing, let me give you an idea why I love it:

Three faces, talking faces, faces that express emotions, faces to be read, nothing else but these faces in close ups, a mother and her daughter, and a psychotherapist, who is there to make the two reconcile after a long separation. For

75 minutes you are in that room of intimacy and suffering and pain, studying how the intelligent, sometimes tough sometimes soft, therapist makes the two open up for the traumas that come from their childhoods’ lack of care and love. Look at the still photo of the daughter, she is full of defiance towards her mother, she gets aggressive and sad when she talks about the divorce of her mother and father, it is embarrassing for the two involved and for the viewer… but liberating when the therapist interrupts, very often by saying “could we use another word” or by interpreting one of the many sentences coming from daughter and/or mother.

As a viewer you know these stories, in a way it is very banal – a child feeling guilt because of the parents divorcing, just one of the themes coming up, the reason it is so good stems from the filmmaking, the three are so good, they are so well directed, the editing goes smooth from one to the other, you listen while you watch either the one talking or the one listening. Like he proved in “Chemo”, Pawel Lozinski has this unique skill of going to the core taking away all the unnecessary and bringing to us a cinematic conversation piece of universal reach.

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2416/ (Lozinski, Father and son)

Poland, 2016, 75 mins.