The best soundtracks work on two levels. First, and probably more importantly, they complement the film. They generally reflect the emotion that the director is trying to get across to the viewer, be this tension, sadness, fear or humour. Secondly, it helps if they are good to listen to in their own right, outside the cinema. Given these two aims, here’s a list of some of my favourite soundtracks, both specially composed and ‘found’ – no particular order:
Excalibur
Hellraiser
Return of the Living Dead
Cat People
Repo Man
Paris, Texas
Salvation!
Another interesting idea is working out your own ‘soundtrack’, either for an already existing movie, or a theoretical one. As an example, here’s a possible track listing for a modern vampire film (might please those who think my music tastes are dull!)
Set in the last days of Mussolini’s reign, this film has got into a lot of trouble for it’s sadistic imagery – it’s full version is still banned in Britain – even in truncated form it still remains a very nasty film. The story is negligible. Four Fascists, including a Duke and a priest, kidnap a number of teenage boys and girls – the next ninety minutes is a graphic depiction of the humiliation of these victims. This includes their sodomy, mutilation and also their being forced, literally, to eat shit. This is not a Disney film.
So what possible justification could there be for this exhibition of atrocities?
“Fascism symbolised here by the total subjugation of the sexual victims is merely the ultimate expression of a tendency latent (and to Pasolini inherent) in every power system which depends, as all power systems do, on the submission of the many to the few” — David Wilson
Er, what was that again? Oh, I get it – the Fascists in the film are doing to their victims literally, what Pasolini thinks they did to Italy. This film is taking the Italian equivalent of ‘The Conservatives are screwing the country’ to it’s logical extreme.
Ok, it may be a metaphor, now is it an effective one? I don’t think so. The film makes it’s point in the first half an hour; what follows is pure sledge-hammer cinema, slamming the subject’s head off a wall for an hour and a half. This tactic should only be used when absolutely necessary and the idea you are trying to put across is one so alien to the audience that no other way is possible.
For example, in “Nekromantik”, the director’s ideas on sex & death are so weird that anything less than the torrent of body fluids and corpses would just bounce off the average viewer’s moral barricades – these NEED to be broken down to get the message across. The message in “Salo” is no more controversial than ‘The Italian Fascists did some bad things’, which most people would agree with, and is surely not sufficient reason to produce a film where one of the ‘highlights’ is a meal of steaming turds.
What makes the film especially unpleasant is the absence of any sort of justice. At the end, the torture continues unabated and there is no reason to believe the torturers will eventually be punished for their crimes, even in a ‘Dirty Harry’ way, or that there will ever be any escape for the victims, except through death. The viewer doesn’t get the relief of knowing that crime i.e. torture doesn’t pay.
But overall, I can’t help thinking there are far better ways of putting the point across. If the Fascists were as evil as the voice-over at the start claims, then a straight portrayal of their behaviour would have had a greater impact on me than a story written by an 18th century pervert. As it is, the images remain disgustingly striking, but the message of the film is diluted severely by the irrelevance of the story and the generally gratuitous nature of most of the scenes.
Let’s start off with the letter I was most pleased to receive in the past three months.
Hampshire County Council, Winchester – “I note your intention to issue proceedings in the Small Claims Court… I am prepared on this occasion, without any admission of liability, to meet your claim.”
Finally. Last September, I hit a pothole on my way home from work and since then have been trying to get the Council to pay for the wrecked back wheel my bike sustained. Five months, half a dozen letters and some advice from a solicitor (Scottish, and therefore possibly wrong) later, I tell them I’m going to sue. They cave in. Sigh. Put away the “Jagged Edge” video, Jim, and get on with the real letters. Still not got the money, though that was six weeks back!
The general tone of them was complimentary:
Alun Fairburn, Ammanford – “A very good read indeed.”
Simon Wood, Blewbury – “Excellent stuff!! A vast improvement upon most fanzines”
This comes as no surprise. If I get a fanzine I dislike, I don’t write and explain why, I just don’t bother getting it again. Thus we can assume that, for example, Gengiz Mehmet and Michael Corney didn’t like it – poor Gengiz thought it was a football fanzine, for reasons too complex to go into here, but entirely unconnected with the Forres v Alloa back cover!
Getting down to specific bits, very few pieces got nothing but a bad response; most bits were liked by SOMEBODY. There were a few ‘differences of opinion :
AF – “I particularly enjoyed the ‘Nightmares in a Damaged Brain’ piece.”
Tommy Campbell, Glasgow – “…boring & confused.”
Generally received with favour was ‘The Incredibly Bad Film Show’…
TC – “Excellent, and should be expanded on.”
AF – “Looks like being a very interesting series.”
…and ‘It Must Be True’, alias ‘Beats Reality, Doesn’t It?’
TC – “…should be kept…”
David Oliver, Whitley Bay – “…very funny…
Not so popular was ‘Classic Splatter’ :
AF – “…has already been done to death.”
TC – “‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ is a bit too obvious.”
Your wish is my command. It’s gone, replaced by ‘Borderline Cinema’, which will cover splatter, sex and other taboo subjects.
Mixing the text with pictures was NOT a success :
Glyn Williams, Derby – “Overprinting the ‘Hellbound’ and ‘Trash Pop’ articles was dumb.”
TC – “…parts of ‘Hellbound and ‘Trash Pop’ were made almost illegible.”
Controversy corner stirred up, as hoped, some response :
GW – “Your argument about leaving things to the experts plays straight into the hands of those who argue that experts should decide what the rest of us should watch.”
Rob Ingram, Farnborough – “When you elect a government, you’re choosing more than an economic policy – there are also moral questions such as who gets social security and how much they get.”
The major chunk on Nastassja was received with a mixture of interest and pleas for bits on other actresses :
GW – “I look forward to the next part.”
TC – “The NK feature was quite good, although I would think that actresses like Dyanne Thorne [The Ilsa movies] or Linnea Quigley would be more suitable.”
DO – “…Linnea Quigley, Barbara Crampton or even Sybil Danning.”
I suppose to be fair, we ought to do an article on Richard Gere or some such actor (As Glyn Williams put it, “What IS the male equvalent of a bimbo?”). However, I couldn’t hack sitting through all his films and Sybil Danning has done far too many (at least 49!), therefore in preparation, a piece on Linnea. The films we can think of that she’s been in are: The Black Room, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Return of the Living Dead, Savage Streets, Night of the Demon, Creepozoids, The Imp, Deadly Friend, Dr Alien and Silent Night, Deadly Night. Anyone out there know of any more?
Finally, Some people liked and some people didn’t like my tastes in music :
SW – “I liked your top 10 records list, as I’ve got 5 of them!”
TC – “Was disappointed at what a conservative taste you have in music”
Paul Smith, Alva – “..listening to rubbish like Tiffany, or even wearing jumpers with sheep on and singing as if something was being shoved up your arse.”
My problem is that I like light, fluffy pop a bit more than groups whose sleeves feature a Jesus lookalike shooting up with a syringe of fetid blood {Hi Steve!! Hi Per!!} – I’m pessimistic enough as it is…
Tiffany impaled on a spike, that seems like a good place to stop. Keep the letters coming. We reserve the right to edit, quote selectively, distort and otherwise act just like a real newspaper…
One of the best things about travel is the contrasts you encounter. One night you’re gambling at Monte Carlo Casino, the next you’re sleeping rough on the sea-front at Nice, with no money, no passport and no way to get home. This, however, is getting ahead of myself. What follows is an account of a journey through Europe made in the second half of August 1988 – it may be of interest, or provide a warning, to anyone planning a similar trip!
The journey didn’t get off to a brilliant start. My Walkman had been playing up for a while, and one earpiece had now died completely, and the other was sounding decidedly dodgy, so I thought it would be a good chance while I was away to get it fixed as the guarantee would have run out by the time I came back. The only chance I had to go to the shop I bought it was on the Saturday morning I left, so on the way to the railway station I popped into Dixons. Unfortunately, they told me (very nicely) that the guarantee didn’t cover the headphones, and that all I could do was buy a new pair. Since my money was all in the form of traveller’s cheques and bureau de change aren’t exactly numerous in Farnborough, this was not much help – in any case, I had ONE cassette with me; though I like Simple Minds, two weeks of them would be too much even for me. Finally, the Walkman was jammed in the bottom of the rucksack for the two weeks, minus the headphones, which I junked in a waste-paper bin at Victoria station.
Reached the hover-port at Dover without anything exciting or interesting happening. There, as well as the duty-free shop, they had a variety of machines designed to take the last 10p coins out of your pocket; fruit machines, video games, etc. I tried to invest my loose change in one; unfortunately I kept winning – by the time I finally gave up trying to get rid of them, I’d won about eight pounds. Something was clearly wrong with the machine; I watched four or five people playing it, and they all came away better off.
The hovercraft trip was dull – you can’t see out, as there’s too much spray being blown around, and you can’t walk about either, so I got on with reading my book. I decided just to take the one with me, a nice 600 page long epic, and try and ration it out to last me the whole fortnight. In the end, I read it in about three days on Nice beach and from then on, it joined the Walkman at the bottom of the bag.
Murgatroyd49 / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
Didn’t get to see much of Paris, just the Metro from one railway station to the next. The train from there to Nice was almost dead, I had a whole carriage to myself and managed a fairly pleasant night,waking up just in time to see the sun rise over the Mediterranean. It was warm – I was still wearing my British Summer clothes (long trousers, training shoes, jumper, etc), and I’d forgotten to pack any shorts so I just had to sit and suffer…
Arrived in Nice, and went to the Tourist Information place to see if they could find me a room. This they did, for the princely sum of F.55 per night, little more than a fiver. I was a little worried about just what I was going to get for that – I needn’t have been. The room was small, but perfectly adequate and it even had a fridge in it, which I made a lot of use of during the time I was there. It also had the shower room to one side, the toilet to the other, and the hot water tank for the whole hotel occupied most of one wall. Still, it had a bed and a roof, which was all I really wanted.
First stop was to buy some shorts! I found a hideously repulsive pair in a bin marked ‘End of Line’ – they were fluorescent yellow and not the sort of thing anyone self-respecting would have bought. I thought they were brilliant. Finally, I could now go down to the beach, or what’s supposed to be the beach. In Nice,what they have instead of sand are large pebbles, just big enough to be extremely uncomfortable if you didn’t have a beach mat to lie on. Guess who didn’t? Decided to pass on the swimming, because last time I swam in the Med was just after some thoughtful tanker owner had decided to wash out his tanks, and the resulting black gunge coated everything it touched, including me. I just lay on the beach and enjoyed the view.
The rest of the week followed pretty much the same pattern. This makes quite dull reading; if you’re after excitement,adventure and really wild things, skip the next paragraph.
W. M. Connolley / CC BY-SA (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)
I’d climb out of bed at about 10 a.m and head for the beach, stopping in at the local supermarket on the way to buy the supplies for the day. These usually consisted of some bread, cold meat, chocolate biscuits (to be eaten on the way to the beach to stop them from melting!) and a large bottle of Orangina, a very popular drink on the continent, only occasionally seen here – it’s like Fanta made with real oranges. The day was then spent relaxing in the sun, thoroughly enjoying having absolutely NOTHING to do. About five o’clock, when the sun began to sink behind the hotels, I’d head back to my room and have a sleep (well, it’s been a tough day) for a couple of hours before heading out and grabbing something to eat (Nice has two McDonald’s).
For the single traveller, Nice in the evenings doesn’t have a lot to offer. It’s a very ‘social’ city, and almost all the entertainment is aimed at two or more people; it was still fun for me to people-watch in the pedestrian zone. However, there was a four-day spell when my longest conversation was ‘Un grand pommes frites, un cheeseburger et un shake au chocolat, s’il vous plait’, so my tongue got a holiday too.
Didn’t spend ALL my time on Nice beach. Spent two days on Monte Carlo beach, and two on Cannes beach – the former had smaller rocks than Nice, and Cannes had REAL sand, though the second day I was there there was a strong wind blowing, which meant I got sandblasted; I was picking grains out of my ears for days. Of course, I overdid the sun. Even with the Protection Factor 10 sun-lotion I splattered about, enough still got through to make it very uncomfortable, with my shoulders, the back of my knees and for some reason my right ear-lobe suffering worst. The last couple of days there, I began to “peel” and itch like mad – sad to see my hard-earned sun-tan coming off in handfuls.
Highlight of the week for me was the evening at the Casino. I’d scouted it out already during one of my visits to the beach, so I knew that the luminous shorts and sandals were OUT. I had brought a half-decent pair of trousers with me (you couldn’t see the paint spots unless you looked closely) and a nice shirt with buttons, so they let me in, even though I was wearing training shoes…
Toni Lozano / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)
There were two rooms you could go to; the European or the American, the main difference from my point of view being that the European room cost F.50 to get into – I couldn’t see why I should have to pay for the privilege of losing money, therefore I went to the American room to find myself a nice place at a Roulette table. The other players were a mix of foreign tourists and ‘locals’ (well, they spoke French, anyway) and I sat and watched for a while to suss things out. Most of the chips were different colours of plastic – I’d always thought that was to show the values, but I was told that each player had a different colour, and the chips were all F.10. Bigger chips were available if you wanted – these were multi-coloured with a metal disk in the middle, and ranged from F.100 up (and up – outside the European room they had a case with the possible values in. They stopped at 100,000 francs). I handed over my life savings, or at least F.200 of them and received a pile of chips that looked rather smaller than everyone else’s!
They needed them. While I spent the whole evening putting ONE chip on a number or a group or numbers, they sprayed them about like confetti. I saw one person get F.1000 worth of chips and use them all up in about three shots. Meanwhile, I kept on playing ONE chip! Fortunately,on just the second shot, I got lucky. My chip was on No.14, and to my astonishment, that was where the ball landed. I’m no poker-face; in fact, I had to restrain myself from doing a lap of honour round the table as the croupier counted out my F.350. I toyed with the idea of quitting while I was ahead and decided against it – what the hell, you don’t get the chance to visit Monte Carlo THAT often. The rest of the evening wasn’t quite as successful – I think I won once, F.60 – though since I was playing with their money, I wasn’t too bothered. I found it surprisingly exciting, waiting for the ball to stop bouncing and WILLING it towards your number – I can see how people get hooked on it, and it would be VERY easy to lose a large amount of money at it. I left while just about even, having thoroughly enjoyed it.
On the Saturday night I had to leave for Switzerland. on the night train to Geneva. It had only gone a few miles when I suddenly found that my passport, travellers cheques, Inter-rail card, etc had gone. I don’t know whether they were stolen (nothing else in the bag with them was taken) or lost (they were in a zipped up pocket); the hard fact was that I didn’t have them. I got off the train at the first stop, and headed back to Nice to see if anyone had handed them in. No-one had. By this time, it was about 9.30 at night, and I had no money at all. I phoned American Express to see if they could replace my travellers cheques, but there was nothing they could do till Sunday – even if they had, all the places to cash them would have been shut. I had one option. Sleep on the beach.
[TO BE CONTINUED]
Junielib / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
10 Places in Europe Well Worth a Visit.
The Swiss Alps. Beauty beyond belief.
Palace of Versailles. Probably cheaper to buy than most houses in London.
Alhambra, Seville. Style and cool, where 2) is O.T.T. and trashy.
Amsterdan Red-Light District. No comment.
Monte Carlo. On with the mirror shades, down to the harbour and POSE!
Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen. Disneyland for grown-ups (above).
Vienna. More architecture per acre.
Florence. History condensed into tins.
Berlin. East meets West.
Any railway carriage with nobody in it…
Trash News
In the last issue, I recall bemoaning the lack of trash politics in Britain – Italy has La Cicciolina, France has Le Pen, but we seemed to have no-one at all capable of dragging the politicians off their high horses down to the level of the rest of us. That was until the arrival of Pamella Bordes.
I just want to take this opportunity to thank the lady for providing us, however unwittingly, with the opportunity to see our respected Members of Parliament rushing to disassociate themselves from this ‘research assistant’ at top speed. The best quote yet comes from an un-named ‘friend’ of hers who said, roughly “She has a fantastic oral sex technique – it costs 500 pounds for a blow job, but it’s worth every penny”. More power to your tongue, Pamella, and hope your face heals up soon!!
Last time, we left our heroine at an important point in her career. Having finally made her name as a ‘serious actress’, after several films where she was mainly employed for her decorative appearance, she then proceeded to appear in one best described as ‘disappointing’. What to do now? The answer was simple – get back to taking her clothes off, though of course now in a ‘serious’ manner:
CAT PEOPLE – Paul Schrader, 1982.
Irena (NK) comes to stay with her brother in New Orleans. He has an Awful Secret – when he gets randy, he turns into a panther ( Irena has the same problem, but doesn’t know it). Fortunately, he can make love to his sister without getting the urge to sharpen his claws on the furniture; she is not too ecstatic at the thought, as she’s fallen in love with a keeper at the zoo where she works. Remake of the old B/W classic, with a lot more sex and blood. This is a film with something for everyone: incest, bestiality and bondage among other practices. I’m not sure if this is an sexy splatter film or a splattery sex film – it IS torrid, and although it loses the atmosphere of the original, it makes up for it in passion.
This would be THE perfect NK film – she is on the screen almost constantly and indulges in things unlikely to be approved of by Mrs. Whitehouse – except for one thing. Why did she cut her hair?? Sob…
Critically slagged, but loved by the public, after lots of free publicity when NK whined about the amount of nudity/sex in the final version. This guaranteed it success (cf. 9 1/2 Weeks, Last Tango in Paris)!!. Moving rapidly on:
EXPOSED – James Toback, 1982
NK gets involved with Rudolf Nureyev, who plays a musician on the track of a gang of terrorists responsible for a bomb that killed some of his family. She agrees to help him track them down and infiltrates their cell. They are not chuffed when they find out about this…
Reasonable drama, starts off slowly with a lot of unnecessary junk about NK coming to New York after an unhappy love affair and being discovered as a model. When she joins the terrorists, things perk up a bit and it’s quite a good ending.
Flesh content not great. New addition to list of NK perversions; being played like a cello. NK is in a lot of scenes, with another new hairstyle, still not as good as when it was long…
FRUHLINGSSINFONIE (Spring Symphony) – Peter Schamoni, 1982.
A rare East/West German co-production, this film is based on the life of composer Robert Schumann, and his wife Clara, played by NK. The main point of the film is the conflict between Robert and Clara’s father over her; as much a battle between generations as between individuals. A nice film, basically a remake of ‘Immortal Passion’ [ at least that’s what the French title translates as! ], starring Katherine Hepburn. The period atmosphere (Germany between the wars) is created well, with good use of costume and sets.
Obviously, the subject matter doesn’t lend itself to gratuitous nudity – still, NK is back to looking at her best and there’s a blink-and-you-miss-it nipple. For me, the most droolworthy she’s looked since becoming a megastar, and about the last film in which she is truly gorgeous. Downhill from here on, folks!
The trials and tribulations of a family, as they take up ownership of a hotel, try to run it, fail, move to Vienna, get taken hostage by international terrorists and finally live happyish ever after.
A pet project of Jodie Foster’s this, based on the book by John Irving. Described by the Daily Mail as ‘a very funny film’ – since one of the central incidents is Jodie Foster getting gang raped (again!), we can deduce the paper has an odd sense of humour. Weird film, has it’s moments, but not enough of them.
NK and Jodie Foster in lesbian love scene!! However, it is incredibly coy, with the sheets pulled up to the neck. NK doesn’t appear until late on, and is generally clad in a bear skin. She does take this off once, but it’s too dark to tell!
LA LUNE DANS LE CANIVEAU (The Moon in the Gutter) – Jean-Jacques Beneix, 1982
Gerard Depardieu is obsessed with finding the people responsible for raping and killing his sister. He meets NK, and they embark on a love-affair interspersed with brutality when he wrongly accuses someone of being the murderer. Not a lot else happens. and this is in a 137 mins long filmzzzzzz…
The video box screams STARRING NASTASSJA KINSKI AND GERARD DEPARDIEU . Wrong. Starring Gerard Depardieu with NK wandering through a few scenes. Basically dull, some cool photography, but is over long and has an immense number of long and meaningful glances. French art movie, and not even a good one.
As already mentioned, NK doesn’t appear a lot, just sort of drifts about, looking extremely pretty with (yet) another hair- style. There is some nudity in this film, but NK doesn’t take part in any of it. Almost forgettable..
NK is the wife of succesful conductor Dudley Moore. He becomes convinced that Armand Assante is having an affair with her and hatches a plan to kill them both. Needless to say, things don’t quite go as planned.
Dudley Moore stopped being funny when he left Peter Cook. ’10’ was dull, and this isn’t any better. It doesn’t bear up at all to repeated viewings – Dudley’s lack of acting ability comes close to outweighing the joy of Nastassja-watching.
There’s not enough NK in this film. This is clearly a Dudley Moore vehicle. Not a lot to recommend it to the fan, save another freeze-frame topless bit. Probably the worst film she’s appeared in.
A veteran returns from the Second World War, meets his childhood sweetheart (NK) again and marries her. It is not a happy marriage for either of them and they separate to go their own ways.
Marginally interesting product, more arty than normal considering it’s a Golem/ Globus film. The acting is generally good, though after the previous one, anything would be a distinct improvement! Fairly depressing.
Posters for this depict NK on her back with someone’s head betweem her legs. Pretty hopeful, huh? Again, really very coy – even the scene where she resorts to self- stimulation is entirely inoffensive. Could have been a lot better/worse.
Harry Dean Stanton comes out of the desert after vanishing several years ago. He goes to his brother, who has been looking after his son, takes him and tries to find his wife (NK). He does, but not quite where he expected…
Achingly beautiful film, with superb acting from all concerned, especially Harry Dean Stanton. The photography is excellent and is complemented superbly by Ry Cooder’s soundtrack. A movie of the open road, needs to be seen on the big screen to be truly appreciated.
NK doesn’t appear until near the end of the film, and (shockhorrorscandal) is BLONDE! At one point she threatens to take her clothes off but doesn’t – for once it wouldn’t have improved the film…
An Arab sheik, played by Ben Kingsley, kidnaps a New York stockbroker (NK), and takes her away to be part of his harem. Gradually, she starts to appreciate his way of life, a strange mix of Middle Eastern historic and millionaire playboy – he goes out hawking with his entourage following in Landrovers.
An East-meets-West romance. Terribly unsubstantial – at the end, you don’t feel very much of anything at all. Doesn’t educate, entertain or inform; the two words to sum up this film are “So” and “what?”.
As you might expect from a film with such a title, there are lots of opportunities for flesh. Very little of it is NK’s though, with only one shot of her slipping into a swimming pool to awaken some interest in this otherwise dull movie.
“One from the Heart” had been, in financial terms, a total disaster. It cost $26 million to make and took in just one million dollars. Surely it was not possible for Nastassja to take part in a bigger box-office flop than THAT. Wrong. Taking in the same amount, but weighing in at a cost of a massive $28 million, we have:
REVOLUTION – Hugh Hudson, 1985
Nastassja is the daughter of an aristocratic family who becomes a supporter of the growing American Revolution. She meets and falls in love with Al Pacino, a trapper who has also been caught up in it. They are split up during a battle, and Al is told she has been killed…
Not as bad as the reviews (it couldn’t be) – not a masterpiece, perhaps, but not a turkey. The battles are impressively staged and there are a few memorable scenes. Al Pacino is a bit miscast & NK does her best at a challenging role – remember, she is really German!
No sex, and not a lot of Kinski. The poster for this film, with Pacino in the fore- ground and NK lurking behind his shoulder, about sums it up. NK is looking pretty again, following a couple of films where she looked a lot like a mother of two.
And there, for the moment, her career rests; it wouldn’t do to ignore the careers of the rest of her family. Father Klaus is well known for appearing in literally hundreds of films, ranging from the classy (“The Return of Martin Guerre”) to the trashy (“Titan Find”); he is possibly best known for his performance as Nosferatu. His autobiography was going to be published in this country – unfortunately, since it said a lot of libellous things about almost everyone he’s known, especially Werner Herzog, it was withdrawn on legal advice (if you want to, you can catch him in the recently released videos “The Vampires of Venice”) . Less well known is Nastassja’s sister, Pola. I didn’t know she’s been in any films myself, until I caught one, almost by accident, in the late night slot on Thames TV. For the sake of completeness, the details I can recall of it are as follows:
YESTERDAY’S TOMORROWS – Wolfgang Staudte, 1978?
The film starts off originally, with the suicide of Pola’s character – the rest of the story is told in flashback. It takes place in Germany just after the end of the WW 2 and is the sad tale of Pola falling in love with, marrying, and finally being left by, an American officer.
Pola does have some of her sister’s looks, though without her ethereal beauty. The moive is strongly reminiscent of “Maria’s Lovers”, although set in Europe – it is a good example of a continental film; solid acting, gloomy story!
One area it differs from many European films is the lack of sex. However, since PK isn’t quite as pretty, this isn’t too worrying. She is on the screen a lot, though.
