Inventory

Difficulty of human relations in a 3-cornered tale: a neurotic woman, idealistic young man and his mother. Tomek is a clean-cut, high-minded geography student. He lives with his mother Zofia, a sensitive, practicing Catholic, like her son. When he meets Julia, a depressed woman older than he, he first tries to comfort her, then invites her to stay with him and his mother. Tomek makes a trip to West Berlin to visit his well-off father. He refuses to take money from him and looks for work as a house painter. Julia ends up in a rest home for treatment, while Tomek is trying to make their relationship work.

• love affair
• catholic guilt
• social realism
• moral dilemma
• post-war poland
• emotional realism
• faith and religion
• european cinema
• existential drama
• eastern bloc
• polish drama
• human conscience
• love and morality
• intellectual life