Living in a Renaissance palace trapped in perpetual summer sounds sublime. It’s also a private hell for three nameless Polish-speaking women (played by Helena Ganjalyan, Magdalena Fejdasz, and Daniela Komędera). An unseen technological entity – perhaps AI? – provides for the needs of the women. Even entertainment. But, in exchange, they have a few rules to follow. The ineffectual robotic voice instructs them in therapy-speak to “take in the light” and other absurdities to ensure they will have another “glorious day.” One of the stranger rules is that they can’t say “die,” as death seems to be a concept the keepers of the palace want to keep foreign. The more important rule is that they can never leave the property. They forfeit their freedom for luxury stability.
Summer never ends in this world. And when you only know warmth, even the cold becomes enticing. A modern twist on Plato’s cave, they know very little of their stay and even less of the outside world and their curiosities eventually get the best of them as they try to escape the palace and run free on the other side of the wall. And as something of an adaptation of the allegory of the cave, it’s impossible not to hunt for metaphors. The women, despite obvious dystopian turbulence in the far distance, want to grasp at the bigger world. They have been relegated to domestic life in the palace for far too long. There are no men to be seen and the complete absence of any patriarchy makes any metaphor for female oppression slightly more difficult to justify beyond the mere fact that all the characters are women and their freedom is stunted.
The 16mm cinematography gives a warm touch to Katarzyna Tomczyk’s incredible production design that brings a Renaissance palace into a modern dystopia. DP Tomasz Woźniczka and Tomczyk do a great job of making the palace into an irresistible heavenly abode. The women’s occasionally religiously sartorial costumes tap into the slightly cultic angle to the story that also comes out in the call-and-response rituals with the mysterious voice.
The women touch each other all the time. The two old hands of the palace, Ganjalyan and Fejdasz, having arrived earlier than Komędera, even communicate in a fascinating secret touch language since some things are better left unheard by any unwelcome big-brother type listeners. Their touches are too ignorant of sexual pleasure to ever roll into anything more carnal, though the gorgeous cinematography always leaves the possibility open. Their physicality shows their comfort and safety with one another, ignorant that physical touch is often traumatic in the real world. The cast members translate their strong roots in dance and choreography into curious animalistic physicalities. Komędera, a dancer in her own right, even led the choreography efforts in the spectacular The Peasants. Glorious Summer even opens with one woman panting like a dog and another crawling on all fours—which makes for an ironic juxtaposition with the high art of Vivaldi and the Renaissance that give life to the palace.
A marginally closer metaphor than the patriarchy is Russian oppression, where freedom is a disease the authoritarian government eradicates in its implementation of total control. The directorial debut of Bartosz Szpak and Helena Ganjalyan, who plays one of the three women, is mostly in Polish too – with strange, partial squabbling in French, Swedish, English, Arabic, and a few other languages – giving it a cultural context right on the border with an aggressive neighbour. The language of “border” is used to describe the outer wall of the palace, further suggesting in the direction of a geopolitical metaphor.
Szpak and Ganjalyan ultimately give little to ground any allegories or metaphors and that left this viewer of Glorious Summer longing for more. The premise’s Platonic roots practically force a big idea catalyser and the ambiguity of the women’s oppression and the dystopian world that oppresses them leaves too many doors open to ever fully satisfy.
Glorious Summer shows in the 25t edition of REC Tarragona.
