LouHomey From my favorite movies..

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Sanjeev Waters A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Ortiz Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

nqure Anna, an abused Polish immigrant forced to work as a prostitute, is rescued by Henk, a taciturn and reclusive farmer. Gradually, as Anna recovers, Henk slowly wins her trust.The film is a subtle, tender love story. Anna, in turn, affects Henk's life bringing a sense of vitality (she sings in the empty house) which brings the emotionally repressed farmer out of his shell. Clearly, this is a man with much love to give but who has retreated himself for one reason or another.It's a very slow paced film, perhaps too much so, but then it is more a character study of two very different, but equally lonely people falling in love.My major criticsim of the film is its ending. Anna's 'employers' return and are brutally murdered; I thought this was quite well done resolving the thriller element of the plot quite effectively. However, Anna & Henk, finally consummate their love immediately after the murders. This seemed out of place and harmony with the rest of the film. It might have been better if the lovers had consummated their passion first before the return of the dreaded pimps, thus adding to the tension of whether their relationship would survive.An interesting film and I think one of the Dutch reviewers was a little harsh on his nation's recent film output. 'Antonia's Line' and 'Character' are very distinctive films; they may not be huge 'hits' or garner many plaudits, but they are original. In a cinematic world which is highly derivative, that is no such bad thing.

psteele I was thrown off balance during The Polish Bride, when Anna's "employers" return to the farm and Henk kills one with a shotgun. Even though they had worked him over and killed his dog on their previous visit, the sudden violence was a shock and seemed too improbable. It wasn't just that Henk had not involved the police but that he when he fired it wasn't quite self-defense. He didn't try to drive the men away by threatening them and didn't wait for them to fire first or even point a gun at him. He just came right out and blew the man away, apparently having made up his mind there was no other way to deal with these men. Apparently they wanted Anna, a Polish immigrant, to work as a prostitute, but even this is little explained, and one of them was the man who had raped Anna, but again, the movie takes little pains to let us know this is the same man. So, it's quite a twist to suddenly be watching a crime movie. Up to this point it's been a characteristically European drama in which the last thing you expect is this kind of violence. A young man from Holland in the audience commented that it's not at all unusual for the rural Dutch to deal with problems in such a way, without involving the police, whom, he said, are mostly useless in any event, if only because such crimes are so rare.After Anna bludgeons the second man, the excruciatingly slow courtship between them suddenly bursts into passion, and they have sex on the floor next to the bloody body of the man just gruesomely killed. One surprise after another. So they've finally broken the last bit of ice between them and have become a couple? No, surprise again. They retire to their separate rooms and she leaves mysteriously for Poland before returning, if it's not Henk's dream, with her daughter. So are they going to live happily ever after on a farm with the graves of two slain gangsters? Who would want to think this is emotionally possible, even if it were realistic in that community? The inherent unsatisfactoriness of such an ending makes you look for other meanings, but without such an ending, the ironies and bizarre darkness of the film only seem greater. Whereas Under the Sun leaves you feeling there's something strong and decent in the troubled human spirit, The Polish Bride leaves you in some doubt.The fascinating elements of this film are all the things that are left unexplained, the way we have to guess, interpret and imagine what's going on behind the events and gestures and expressions we witness. But probably too much is left unsaid. And not just the fact that Anna's employers are underworld figures despite the legality of prostitution in Holland. If Anna is afraid of intimacy with Henk because of having been raped, she doesn't show it, or the movie doesn't let her show it. Her emotional state seems to heal faster than the wound over her eye, and she becomes so comfortable with Henk so quickly, that it's his sexual abstinence that has us more puzzled.One of the effective and priceless scenes is the meal in which a mother-like Anna officiously schools Henk in her etiquette of eating and praying and Henk nearly erupts in rage and frustration, unable to understand why he is allowing her of all people to treat him as if he were a child, but in a kind of curiosity and amazement, let's her go on. It's in such little ways that we're given to glimpse Henk's unspoken feelings for Anna.

lionking-4 The developement of the relation between Anna and Henk is unusual, that's also the reason why the movie is interesting and -in a special way- exciting. Especially the non-dialogues between them, with different reasons for each person. Henk is introvert and doesn't speak Polish, Anna simply doesn't speak Dutch. But from the beginning of the movie I sensed some kind of love and care from Henk to Anna, and vice-versa. It's touchy to see their 'love & tenderness' growing. Very 'romantic', for those who want to see it!

Marcvdb I've seen this movie on an open-air festival in Deurne.It was raining a bit but none of the visitors stood up and walked away. The characters in this movie seem so real. There's such a big tension in this movie. Tension between the Anna and her pimp. Tension between the farmer and Anna. The two characters seem to have a struggle within themselves, which makes what happens in the end inevitable.