The Temptation

The image shows a woman's face in such extreme close up that we can see every pore. We hear a comforting voice: ''Humility brings you closer to god. Humility can help you with the guidance of the body rule.'' We calmly watch the nun slowly crawling on her knees, kissing the feet she meets. Tormented by doubt and hesitation, she moves on to the next foot, and the next. The image is heavily over-exposed which makes it seem unnatural. The viewer is quickly thrown back into the film's ''reality'', back to the real self-denial of the film's principal character, sister Anna. The Temptation is a film about belief, freedom, love and the torment of love. Can you find freedom in a state, a church, in God, or in love? Sister Anna is a nun living in Poland after the end of the Second World War. The Communists capture her to use her as an informant. It becomes apparent that it is an old flame they wish her to betray. And it was her love for this man, and priest, which made her become a nun. The question is whether her love for this man is worth all of her self-denial and suffering? The image is important in The Temptation and throughout it is well composed and simple. The music also produces a simple background for the film images and environments. It is severely sentimental, but not tearful, more thoughtfully melancholic. Light is important for the director, Barbara Sass. It captures atmospheres, or perhaps paints them. This awareness of light is reminiscent of among others Kieslowski's decalogues. It is a colourless world we meet, where even the brightest colours have a touch of grey in them. In this barren, perhaps even hopeless, existence sister Anna tries to find love. She fights for her freedom, for her belief in love. And her fight is chiefly against religious dogmas, an insensitive political system and an insensitive and prejudiced society. A filmmaker who is thematically close to Sass is Agnieszka Holland. Central to both of them is the concept of freedom. The problem is that freedom is always normative. But can you talk of freedom, especially as a woman? When God wants to own a person, he proceeds from freedom, and not as humanity from laws, rules and dogmas. It is in this perspective we should see The Temptation. RL

Premiärstatus
Skandinavisk premiär: Orig. titel
Pokuszenie: Medverkande
Magdalena Cielecka, Olgierd Lukaszewicz, Krzysztof Pieczynski: Producent
Miroslaw Bork: Manus
Barbara Sass: Foto
Wieslaw Zdort: Musik
Michal Lorenc: Talat språk
Polish