
In euphoric early 1990s post-Communist Poland, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, four women experience an utterly different reality, sinking deeper and deeper into despair. Agata, a young married mother, finds herself consumed by an unhappy marriage and an almost obsessive infatuation for an unreachable man, as the frigid school principal, Iza, battles with rejection. Meanwhile, Iza's sister, Marzena, a 1986 beauty pageant winn... (Full plot summary below)
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In euphoric early 1990s post-Communist Poland, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, four women experience an utterly different reality, sinking deeper and deeper into despair. Agata, a young married mother, finds herself consumed by an unhappy marriage and an almost obsessive infatuation for an unreachable man, as the frigid school principal, Iza, battles with rejection. Meanwhile, Iza's sister, Marzena, a 1986 beauty pageant winner and, nowadays, an aerobic instructor, suffers from her husband's long absence. Likewise, Renata, a reclusive middle-aged language teacher, finds solace in her singing birds and a silent longing for the unattainable object of her desire: her next-door neighbour. Sadly, as the quartet chases a pure and intense passion in all the wrong places, the piercing sadness of unrequited loves and the unceasing anguish of bitter obsessions linearly connect them. Does pain exist in the United States of Love?
Leave your thoughts about United States of Love.
| The Film StageTommaso TocciThe film owes a lot to the four central performances, with Kijowska proving especially heartbreaking in her solitude. |
| Battle Royale With CheeseRosalynn Try-HaneMagdalena Cielecka is mesmerising on screen and it is her performance that gives this film its power. |
| GuardianPeter BradshawThis film is not here to make you feel good. But it has a soap-operatic watchability. |
| MovieMailMike McCahillIf you wanted a film to remind you nobody had it better than we do - and I could well understand why you might right now - than United States of Love provides a bracing vodka-expresso jolt. |
| CineVuePatrick GambleThere's no denying that Wasilewski is one of cinema's most promising new voices. |
| Observer (UK)Wendy IdeThe talented young writer-director Tomasz Wasilewski has an eye for eloquent framing and touches of absurdity, both of which evoke the work of Austrian film-maker Ulrich Seidl. |
| Film Ireland MagazineStephen PorzioWasilewski shoots the film in a similar method to directors like Kieslowski, Michael Haneke or Asghar Farhadi -- observing his central player's lives from an unobstrusive cold distance to allow the viewer to form their own interpretation on events. |
| Irish TimesTara BradyIt's a magnificent achievement, but it's seldom pleasant to behold. |
| Cinemanía (Spain)Sergio F. PinillaAn episodically narrated choral film, that stands out due to the formal consensus between the filmmaker Wasilewski and the famous Romanian photo director Oleg Mutu. [Full review in Spanish] |
| Total FilmMatt LookerWashed-out pastels match a cold, dispassionate exploration of love and anguish in this Polish drama from Tomasz Wasilewski. |