Joanna Kulig

In Cold War (2018), Joanna Kulig’s Zula seems impatient with the care Paweł Pawlikowski has taken over the picture. Her appetite and restlessness disturb those careful compositions, making her presence felt without any need for the film to announce it. With Tomasz Kot’s Wiktor so persistently drawn to her, Kulig has to make the attraction convincing without making Zula agreeable. She does, and we recommend the film for the difficult affection between them.

Pawlikowski had already cast her as Ania in The Woman in the Fifth (2011) and as a singer in Ida (2013). Cold War gave her a leading role written for her, and brought her international breakthrough. Singing and dancing recur in her work, but here they belong to a performance that follows Zula across fifteen years. The musical accomplishment is worth attending to, though it would be a mistake to let it distract from how much Kulig conveys through her impatience.

We were moved by Cold War because Kot makes his longing feel exhausting, while Kulig makes it easy to understand why he cannot put it aside. Pawlikowski gets something valuable from their different temperaments: her restlessness makes his persistence harder to watch. Neither actor insists on being liked, which leaves us free to take the couple’s feelings seriously without excusing their behaviour. Our reservation is with the gaps between scenes, which sometimes leave too much of the change in those feelings unexplained.

Her work in Polish, French and English opens up plenty of possible directions, and international film and television parts have followed Cold War. We would be wary of a role that gave her songs but none of the awkwardness she brings to Zula. The attraction of watching her is that she allows a character to be talented, wanted and troublesome at once. Give her another part that does not require her to behave.