After two years away, a woman emerges from the wilderness with a drastically different identity, with tics and recollections of her former self flashing only intermittently through, like glitches in an otherwise complete new entity. That’s the story of the protagonist in “Fugue,” an anxious, storm-brewing melodrama from Polish director Agnieszka Smoczyńska, though it could as easily describe its gifted director’s reemergence: Gravely composed and played in an aptly atonal minor key, it’s the last follow-up we could have expected to “The Lure,” the deranged adult mermaid musical with which Smoczyńska conspicuously debuted in 2016. Some will be disappointed by the lack of fishy flash and fancy in “Fugue,” but its controlled expansiveness of tone, psychology and camera mark its helmer — invaluably aided by writer-star Gabriela Muskała — as a stylist of considerable, unpredictable finesse. She could go anywhere from here; festival selectors, distributors and audiences would be wise to follow.
- 5/16/2018
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
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