Lesley Manville has already delivered one of the performances of the year in Midwinter Break and she stars here as psychologist Dr Joan Andrews.
In 1981, Joan travels to Warsaw to give a talk at a conference and immediately is disquieted by her luggage going missing. Student Alina (Zofia Wichlacz) meets her and tells her she will sort it out the next day but needs her passport to do so. Her lecture is interrupted by students staging a pro-democracy demonstration lead by Alina’s brother Marek (Jakub Guszkowski). No hotel has been booked for Joan, so she has to sleep in an empty apartment. The next morning she awakes to find that the government has declared martial law, and that the secret police are looking for Joan who is stuck in an unfamiliar city with no means of identification.
Manville is again outstanding as the prickly academic. She seems selfish and entitled to start with, but gradually shows her humanity. As her situation escalates, director Kasia Adamik layers on the suspense skilfully, with a very gripping last 15 minutes as Joan tries to leave the country.
Wichlacz gives a fiercely committed performance and Tom Burke is great as the British ambassador who may or not be trustworthy. Sandra Buchta’s screenplay, based on the short story Professor Andrews Goes to Warsaw by Olga Tokarczuk, mostly works as both a thriller and a drama about the military regime.
There are some minor flaws though. People who can’t speak English or Polish understand enough if the plot requires it and Joan seems to navigate her way around a strange city at quite a pace.
Rating: 8 out of 10