‘Woman Of…’: Venice Review

Dirs. Małgorzata Szumowska, Michał Englert. Poland/Sweden. 2023. 132 mins. 

The latest film from Polish directing duo Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert, Woman of… is a transgender drama spanning 45 years. A portrait of a trans woman fighting to establish her identity in a repressive climate, it also attempts to trace the transition of Poland itself as it emerges from its Communist years and enters the twenty-first century – a process that, the film suggests, is far from complete. Featuring an affecting performance of compressed intensity by Małgorzata Hajewska-Krzysztofik, Woman of… is a bold, ambitious addition to the oeuvre of an unpredictable film-making team. Dramatically solemn at times, it can be weighed down by the significance of its theme, although it doesn’t pull its punches. LGBTQ+ outlets will embrace it as an important albeit possibly contentious statement, given the lead role is played by a cisgender woman.

The depiction of an oppressive social climate makes for a deeply oppressive mood

The story begins in 1980, at an army draft session when a young man named Adam (Mateusz Wieclawek) nervously refuses to remove his socks; we then see him shoeless, contemplating suicide on a bridge, a close-up revealing his painted toenails. Cut to 2004, with the same figure - now recognisable as a woman, Aniela (Małgorzata Hajewska-Krzysztofik) - in the same desperate position. The film goes on to track their life between these points, also jumping back to Adam’s childhood, where he dresses as a bride after a wedding, then clambers up a tree: physical agility symbolising tenacity in staying aloft in a threatening world.

A series of scenes, briskly edited to make years flash by, shows Adam getting together with nurse Izabela (played in later life by Joanna Kulig, known for roles in Cold War, and TV’s The Eddy, and in her youth by Bogumila Bajor, an uncanny ringer). The couple enjoy a tender, boisterously playful sex life, marry and become parents. Eventually, Lenin statues come down to be replaced by international movie posters (with impish humour, they are for Pretty Woman and The Double Life Of Véronique). With time, Adam changes as much as the world around him; gradually, Aniela becomes a presence in the story and on screen, with Hajewska-Krzysztofik taking over from Wieclawek.

As Aniela struggles to be recognised as a woman, she faces brutal responses, from her parents and from society and the law. If she is to come out as a woman, she must divorce Izabela, as the couple are told two women cannot be married (Poland remains the only country in the EU that does not recognise same-sex marriage). As the couple become estranged, Aniela loses her office job, sacked purely for being herself. Homeless, she moves into a refuge run by nuns, while tentatively exploring a new sex life, then finds herself homeless. Meanwhile, work selling international phone cards - arranged by her brother – misfires, landing Aniela in prison, a grim period of her life mercifully sketched in shorthand strokes.

The harshest moment in the narrative is when a judge flatly tells Aniela, “You don’t exist,” – summing up the attitude, not just of the law and the Catholic church, but of Polish society in general, with end credits noting that Poland to this day has no law on gender recognition. The film’s title, incidentally, alludes to Andrzej Wajda’s classic diptych Man Of Marble/Man Of Iron (1977-81), suggesting that Aniela is as much an icon of Polish change as that film’s male protagonists.

That end note makes a bleak sign-off, despite a cautiously upbeat conclusion for Aniela – but getting there sometimes feels a rough trek, given the film’s sombre atmospherics and two-hour-plus running time. The problem is that the depiction of an oppressive social climate makes for a deeply oppressive mood, both visually and dramatically, a problem that the film – after its initial buoyancy – never quite overcomes.

The film-makers are no strangers to fluidity, stylistically speaking, given the variety of their long collaboration together (with DoP Englert co-credited as director since 2020’s Never Gonna Snow Again). Their work has ranged from sober realism (2013’s In the Name of…) to dream-tinged social satire (Never Gonna Snow Again) to survival thriller (their last film, the English-language Infinite Storm). In this minutely observed drama, they recreate the minutiae of a changing nation, but undercut strict realism by having Hajewska-Krzysztofik, aged 57, step into the picture at an early stage of Aniela’s life.

Her casting is likely to cause controversy, as the actress – previously seen in Szumowska’s Happy Man and 33 Scenes in Life - is a cisgender woman. This is a decision, the directors have stated, that was unavoidable in a Polish context and one they did not take lightly, made with the support of the film’s trans advisors. They have also noted their close collaboration with the trans community, with trans people playing both trans and cis roles, and with a significant LGBT presence on the crew. Hajewska-Krzysztofik’s casting may be problematic for some, but her characterisation of Aniela – wire-thin, tense, vulnerable but resilient – brings a fascinating ambivalence, challenging our perceptions of the differing degrees of maleness and femaleness in a character embarking on a long process of research into her self.

Her lively, often tender interplay with Kulig brings welcome warmth to a film that can sometimes be oppressively chilly in depicting life lived in an inhospitable world.