Wojciech Voytek Olchowski | Presilenie (Solstice) / 2016

without friends

by Douglas Messerli

 

Wojciech Voytek Olchowski (screenplay and director) Presilenie (Solstice) / 2016

 

Polish director Wojciech Voytek Olschowski’s Solstice is like an outline for a film about gay teen love without hardly any character development or events. A young man attending the summer solstice festival listens to part of a rock concert before heading off. Before he can leave the park, another young teen stops him and suggests they sit and talk for a short while. The two Mateusz Zieleźnik and Krzysiek Kuśmierz begin an awkward conversation toward what any LGBTQ+ individual would recognize as the beginnings of a gay relationship, starting with a discussion of being alone, attending the event without any friends.

 

     Their introduction to one another is almost immediately interrupted by the appearance of what appears to be his own brother, who we soon after discover is mentally challenged. The bother (or another friend) immediately asks him “Who is this boy?” a question, in either case, that is a true challenge in Poland, where increasingly gays have been feeling threatened and challenged.

      In any event, the young teen immediately gets up and leaves.

      The next day, we briefly meet his father (there appears to be no mother) and his brother, as well as his grandmother with who he meets for a short chat. She discusses the problems that her grandson given his school responsibilities and evidently the care of his brother, and attempts to encourage him to find his own life and fulfillment away from the family.

      The following day he again meets up with the new friend, apologizing for his behavior and explaining that he feels stupid for his behavior. His new friend challenges him wondering it their relationship might still be a problem, and the film ends with the young teen admitting that he doesn’t know, it could be or might not. In short, we see no resolution, no further discussion of their possible relationship, and have no way of knowing whether a real relationship has even begun.

      Given the current gay scene in Poland, perhaps this is the best a young director such as Olchowski and do: simply shrug his shoulders and hope that the two teens might find a way to get to know one another. But as a film, it establishes no territory in which we feel as viewers that we might enter into even imagining what such a narrative might actually entail. Sadly, the “solstice” which is represented by the image of a fern, a sign, so the director tells us, of love and adventure, is itself something almost to be denied. For gays in today’s Poland, celebration of any sort seems something to be approached carefully, even as this young teen has done, an event to be denied: “You know, probably it is not my style.”

 

Los Angeles, July 3, 2024 | reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2024).