The Cinematheque

“Well aware that Hitchcock and Michael Powell have been down these streets before him, Kieślowski turns in an absolutely masterly movie that yields equal parts of humour and wry emotional truth.”

Tony Rayns, Time Out

Krzysztof Kieślowski’s splendid film, ​“with or without its Biblical point of reference, is a taut, sombre little masterpiece” (Jonathan Keates, Sight and Sound). Tomek (Olaf Lubaszenko), a virginal 19-year-old postal worker in Warsaw, spies by telescope on neighbour Magda (Grażyna Szapołowska), an attractive, sexually uninhibited woman in her thirties. A growing infatuation leads to bolder behaviour by the inexperienced youth who’s in over his head when the jaded, formidable Magda starts returning his attention, triggering the film’s structural rotation from his to her perspective. Kieślowski’s darkly ironic yet deeply romantic tale of intimacy, obsession, and voyeurism recalls Hitchcock’s Rear Window, and features superb performances from the two leads. The film expands an hour-long episode from the director’s Dekalog (“Thou shalt not commit adultery”) and also adds an entirely different ending, resulting in a substantially altered work.

In Polish with English subtitles

“A Short Film About Love speaks with the tranquility of a parable … Exquisite.”

Eric Henderson, Slant Magazine