SWEET RUSH (TATARAK) .World Cinema

Now 83, Polish master Andrzei Waida has created a sublime work about love and mortality Teaming up again with actress Krystyna Janda (MAN OF IRON, l 98 1 ), he adapts a poignant short story by Jarosaw lwoszkiewicz – the source of three previous Waida films – about a dying woman’s last erotic encounter. But Waida adds a crucial, startling layer the real-life account of Janda’s last days with her husband (and frequent Wadia collaborator), the cinematographer Edward Klosinski, who became fatally ill prior to filming. Incorporating Janda’s staggeringly intense monologues about her husband’s last days, SWEET RUSH becomes a celebration of the beauty and fragility of life, and the arbitrary nature of death Achieving some of the heightened reality of a Shakespearean romance, SWEET RUSH offers a valedictory testament of almost magical purity and lucidity.