A Short Film About Love is the sixth film in Kieslowski’s “Decalogue” series. Because it was admired by the audience, the film was extended to twenty-five minutes.
Tomek, a young post office officer named Magda, who is older than himself in the opposite building, spies on a small telescope every night. He’il fall in love with him as a result of surveillance. It’s a passionate, unexpected, painful love.
Men come in and out of Magda’s house, making love to them without knowing that the young audience is watching. Tomek loves women so much that they can’t watch them make love, our heart is for Tomek, we get angry with her. Even though our mind tells us to watch the young man as harassment, when the film progresses, our hearts see the lens of the telescope as the eyes of a desperate lover. The concept of morality is confused at this point, is it being watched, harassed or in love?
Unconditional Pure Love
Ek You were crying, Tom Tomek shouts after her. Magda cannot make sense of what the young man says, and then learns that he watches it every evening. She doesn’t believe in true love. He despises the boy’s love and tries to prove to Tomek that his obsession with him is nothing but sexuality. But he is mistaken, Tomek has no expectation of this love, his problem is just love.
Unconditionally pure love represents the young lover, despite all the provocations of the woman’s love does not give up. The emotions he experiences are real, his suffering is real, he can give up his life for this cause without thinking. These scenes bring to mind Metin Erksan’s Time to Love. Love for the face rather than the body itself; it does not disappear, it does not deteriorate, it will remain in the heart forever.
Magda will learn from Tomek, who is younger than her, what love means. But is it always lost when it is achieved, isn’t it the fate of love? From the observer to the observer, the woman watches the path of her young lover. He goes to his door, looks in his room with binoculars. As if he is deeply accepted, will his true love, which he has been late for, abandoning his search for years and accepting his absence, flee his hands?
We see the woman crying in Tomek’s room, and the woman sees her crying as she looks at her house through a tiny telescope. The night Tomek yells you’re crying. When the director overlaps, what comes out is fascinating. Consolation Tomek woman, in fact, has always been there. Although she did not know, she caressed her head and cried with her. True love is there. Pure love has flowed into the lens of the telescope, and has been lost in the past, tangled in Magda’s tears.
A Short Film About Love (Polish: Krótki film o miłości) is a Polish romantic drama film directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski and starring Grażyna Szapołowska and Olaf Lubaszenko. Written by Krzysztof Kieślowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz, the film is about a young post office worker deeply in love with a promiscuous older woman who lives in an adjacent apartment building. After spying on her through a telescope, he meets and declares his love for this jaded woman who long ago gave up on believing in love. She responds to his innocence by initiating him on the basic fact of life—that there is no love, only sex.
A Short Film About Love is an expanded film version of Dekalog: Six, part of Kieślowski’s 1988 Polish language ten-part television series, Dekalog. The film is set in Warsaw. The film was selected as the Polish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 61st Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.
A Short Film About Love (1988)
Directed by: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Starring: Grazyna Szapolowska, Olaf Lubaszenko, Stefania Iwinska, Piotr Machalica, Artur Barcis, Hanna Chojnacka, Stanislaw Gawlik, Tomasz Gradowski, Malgorzata Rozniatowska, Emilia Ziólkowska
Screenplay by: Krzysztof Kieslowski, Krzysztof Piesiewicz
Production Design by: Magdalena Dipont, Halina Dobrowolska
Cinematography by: Witold Adamek
Film Editing by: Ewa Smal
Costume Design by: Hanna Cwiklo, Malgorzata Obloza
Set Decoration by: Robert Czesak, Grazyna Tkaczyk
Art Direction by: Halina Dobrowolska
Music by: Zbigniew Preisner
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Film Polski (Poland)
Release Date: October 21, 1988 (Poland)
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