Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Piotr Domalewski
Starring: Zofia Stafiej, Kinga Preis, Arkadiusz Jakubik, Dawid Tulej, Tomasz
ZięTek
On the 1st of May 2004, Poland joined the European Union. As a particular
victim of the global economic depression, in the ensuing years the country
saw a mass emigration of around two million Polish nationals, with the
migrant Polski looking abroad for a better standard of living. This was
chiefly found within the handful of member states which allowed new EU
citizens to work immediately without restriction within its borders. The
UK was one of the member states, and Ireland, where writer/director
Piotr Domalewski’s I Never Cry is set, is another.
What quantitative research, which reduces people to (exploitable) numbers,
cannot reveal, however, is the individual circumstance of each migrant;
mainly men who had left the homeland in order to fulfil manual labour
roles in more prosperous member states. Poland is ideologically
conservative, and families there often conform to venerable gender roles.
A large portion of the fellas who hit the trail did so in order to provide
for their loved ones back in Polska, an unideal situation which gives
I Never Cry its central premise.
We are first introduced to key character Olka (Zofia Stafiej -
amazing) during her driving test. 17-year-old Olka is a proper little
firebrand: swerving to avoid another driver’s mistake she fails her test,
and ends up getting into a fight which sees her instructor decked and the
careless driver’s number plate being booted off his car. Thing is,
driving, as a neat metaphor for escape from the grey drudgery of urban
living (I Never Cry was filmed irl in rather pretty Olsztyn,
but this film will do nothing for the Polish tourist board), is very
important to the alienated teen. She works in a second-hand dealership,
scrubbing down cars to save up for one herself: a bleak task only
enlivened by power spraying colleagues. Home is grim, too, with Olka’s
mum’s hands full looking after her severely disabled son. She also does
not speak English, which leaves it to Olka to take the phone call from
Dublin informing the clan that their paterfamilias has died in an
industrial accident.
Due to the situation at home, responsibility again falls to Olka, this
time to travel to Dublin as her father’s executor. What follows is a
slightly shapeless bildungsroman wherein Olka comes up against a
picaresque gallery of characters whose lives and destinies have been
affected by free movement. Olka herself wrestles with understanding the
father she never really knew (she cannot identify the body and doesn’t
even know her pop’s middle name), and whether to spend his estate on the
car he promised her, or a funeral. We meet his Polish co-workers, a pervy
hairdresser who takes advantage of the immigrant women working for him,
and a kindly Polish lawyer who has made a new life for his family.
Interestingly, it is only via this character where the film makes pointed
intimations towards the concept of integration: when Olka asks why the
lawyer speaks to his young son in English, he explains he wants the kid to
have it as his first language. The rest of the bunch - the exploited
women, the male co-workers living together and playing video games - are
presented as separate, liminal within the country where they have settled.
I Never Cry never really explores these ideas and stories,
however. Instead, the film follows in the footsteps of its hyperactive,
mercurial main character, lurching from one misadventure to the next, and,
while always fun to watch, never fully self-actualises.
I Never Cry is in UK/ROI cinemas
from July 23rd.
