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La vie de famille / Zycie Rodzinne
(Fiction, Pologne, 1971, 91’, C, VOSTF) Un jeune ingénieur, Wit, est appelé par télégramme au chevet de son père malade. Son père veut que Wit revienne s’occuper de la
Zycie Rodzinne (Family Life) is Zanussi’s second feature, a largely hermetic, interior and darkly illuminated domestic drama that can be seen as a conscious corrective to his more aesthetically and intellectually adventurous debut, Struktura krysztalu (The Structure of Crystals). It is in almost every way a quieter, more melancholy Chekhovian chamber work that focuses incisively on the deeply fractured relationships within a family compromised by the shifting political and social contexts of twentieth century Europe. Although Family Life is one of the least critically discussed of the director’s works of this era, it is also a characteristic Zanussi film in which figures move within a circumscribed physical environment while talking directly and obtusely – and at length – about their personal, intellectual and professional lives. Zanussi’s work is often concerned with the world of science and philosophy – or, in this case, of engineers – trapping its characters as if “entomological specimens” it then dissects, examines and observes, often at a considerable and calculated distance. senseofcinema.com
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