In 2005, Wiktor's wife, Helena (Halina Golanko), has just died suddenly of a stroke in Poland. Wiktor (Zbigniew Zapasiewicz), the Polish ambassador to Uruguay, arrives to see her too late. An old Russian friend, Oleg (Nikita Mikhalkov), shows up briefly at the funeral for Helena...
Krzysztof Zanussi
Personna non grata
Number of disks: 1
Format: DVD-5
Region: 2 (PAL). European or multi-system DVD player is required to see this DVD.
Format: 16:9
Audio: DD 2.0
Language version: Polish
Subtitles: none
About:
In 2005, Wiktor's wife, Helena (Halina Golanko), has just died suddenly of a stroke in Poland. Wiktor (Zbigniew Zapasiewicz), the Polish ambassador to Uruguay, arrives to see her too late. An old Russian friend, Oleg (Nikita Mikhalkov), shows up briefly at the funeral for Helena. Wiktor wants to know if Oleg was involved with Helena. Oleg must travel to Uruguay and promises to tell Wiktor everything when they meet again.
Wiktor is having trouble with his consulate staff back at the embassy. He knows the Consul (Remo Girone) is filing derogatory reports about him to Warsaw and returns to the embassy to find the Consul sitting at the ambassador's desk. The two have a heated exchange.
Pressures on Wiktor mount. The embassy landlord is raising the rent and they must move. Additions were made to the property, but did the Polish government have permission? The paperwork has been lost and they face heavy fines. The Consul may be conspiring with the landlord.
A second Consul (Andrzej Chyra), sponsored by Wiktor, arrives with his beautiful Russian wife, Radca (Jerzy Stuhr). The Consul fails to detect kilos of cocaine hidden in the casket of a Polish man shipped back to Poland; more bungling by the Polish diplomatic staff. Warsaw sends out inspectors. They are also concerned about closing a deal with Uruguay for the purchase of helicopters.
Oleg arrives in Uruguay to help win the helicopter contract for Russia. Wiktor catches Radca making copies of documents and accuses her of spying for Russia. She denies it saying she is only trying to protect herself from her husband in the future. Oleg and Wiktor meet. Their long friendship is over. Oleg rips apart an old photograph and leaves it in his jacket pocket. Wiktor pilfers the partial photo and it shows Helena with her arm around Oleg.
Wiktor's only friend, his dog, has cancer and Wiktor has the dog put down. Wiktor is despondent and disappears. No ones knows where he is. Oleg arrives at the embassy and gives the Consul the second part of the photograph.
Wiktor spreads his wife's ashes in the ocean and serenely returns to the embassy. The Italians, not the Polish or Russians, have won the helicopter contract. Wiktor has heard the music of the spheres and locks himself away to play it on the piano. He now has the complete photograph that show the three old friends, Wiktor, Helena and Oleg. The embassy staff find Wiktor dead by the piano.
(review courtesy of IMDB)
About the director:
Krzysztof Zanussi, (born 17 June 1939 in Warsaw, Poland) is a Polish producer and film director. He is a professor of European film at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland where he conducts a summer workshop. He is also a professor at the Silesian University in Katowice.
Zanussi studied physics at Warsaw University (Uniwersytet Warszawski) and philosophy at the Jagiellonian University (Uniwersytet Jagiellonski) in Kraków. He is the director of the Polish Film Studio TOR and has received several prizes and awards, including the David di Donatello Prize of the Accademia del Cinema Italiano, the Cavalier's Cross of the Polonia Restituta Order, and the Cavalier de L'Ordre des Sciences et Lettres.
He graduated the Lodz film school with Death of a Provincial (1966), which won an award at the Venice Film Festival. He emerged as a director/screenwriter in the late '60s and early '70s, primarily working for Polish television, until the '80s, when his association with the Solidarity movement forced him into exile in West German and Swiss productions. One of his films, The Catamount Killing (1974), was shot in English, and his work since the mid-'80s has seen wider international financing and distribution.
Krzysztof Zanussi has written On editing an amateur film (1968), Discourse on an amateur film (1978) and the memoirs, memoirs Time to Die (1999). He appeared as himself in Camera Buff (1979), a film about an amateur film maker, directed by his friend Krzysztof Kieslowski.
Zanussi's work is defined by its devotion to ideas at the expense of emotionalism, and intellectualism without overt passions, which did not prevent his fall from grace with the government during Solidarity's temporary defeat in the mid-'80s.
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