FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Zulawski - La Femme Publique (engl. subt.) 

When I founded our video store, Zulawski was basically still an insider tip. You could only tell by how difficult his work was to access on DVD. Fortunately, that is different today. All of his films can be found next to each other on our authors' shelves. After all, this Polish intellectual is practically unsurpassed in his very own way of making cinema! Zulawski was Andrzej-Wajda's assistant director during the 60s until he made his debut in 1971 with his first feature film. His films never take place in our reality, rather they seem like feverish nightmares! His films are always personal, violently symbolic and sensitive. Dreams, visions or reality - it is difficult to keep all that apart. From the beginning Zulawski was controversial in Poland. Eventually he was thrown out of the country - because in atheistic communist Poland Zulawski was much too catholic and mythical! Zulawski always elicits tremendous performances from his actors. He is particularly fascinated by women, whom he perceives as more sensual and mystical than men. Zulawski, a woman director! La Femme Publique is about an outrageously beautiful woman from Paris named Ethel (Valérie Kaprisky). Her father is always drunk, her mother depressed. She avoids contact with both of them. Ethel builds a modest life for herself. Naked, she interprets dances for a taciturn photographer. This seems scary, but not sexy. But Ethel hopes for more from life and auditions for a Dostoyevsky adaptation. The story of self-discovery - but since we are in a Zulawski film, bombs explode and sometimes people are pushed through panes of glass. A fight for passion and life and death - not just acting. We admire Ethel, because she finds a way to survive, learn and express herself. Is there a difference between a life to the fullest and a role to the fullest? No. Not with Zulawski.