From Polish directors Małgorzata Goliszewska and Kasia Mateja, Lessons of Love is an intimate documentary compellingly shot like a comedy-drama feature. This style creates an aura of intrigue out of a familiar subject matter: the idea of reinventing oneself at a ripe age and finding new love. The film follows a woman’s personal journey to forge a new life away from the negative and toxic presence of her husband. It is also a story about facing country-specific social stigmas, especially those concerning femininity, gender roles, and marriage.
The film showed last December at Flahertiana Festival in Russia, not long after large women-led strikes started in Poland. The protests erupted when abortion was further enshrined into law in the largely traditional Roman Catholic country. The rights of Polish women – and the longstanding impact of the Church on more socially conservative elements of Polish society – influenced the directors’ vision in making Lessons of Love, and it shines through.
The piece follows Jola, a vibrant but lost 69-year-old Polish woman who has raised her children in Italy, alongside an unsupportive and abusive husband. Through talks with her friends back in Poland, singing and dance classes, and meeting a kind older gentleman, Jola takes steps to create a new life away from the trauma of years past. The scale of emotional and physical abuse that the truly unpleasant husband has wrought on Jola and their children, now fully grown, cannot be understated. Given how ghastly he is willing to act towards her, on camera no less, it may be perplexing to the audience that Jola had not already left him, or that she clearly agonizes over making the decision.
This is where the subtleties of patriarchal society come in, especially pertinent in a country like Poland. Even while Jola is moving away from this life, there is still something pulling her back, a lurking sense of undermining and control. This is particularly highlighted in the scene where Jola seeks guidance from a young male priest in escaping her clearly unsalvageable marriage – which is only met with establishment platitudes about staying put: “for better or for worse.” In other words, it is worth suffering a broken marriage simply for the sake of it – if these are the kind of condolences that male leaders offer women in need, then the recent actions taken to demand more autonomy are wholly unsurprising.
Jola is a tragic figure, caught up in her upbringing but not willing to radically dissent from her own core beliefs in family values, traditional femininity, and standard gender roles. As she says, “a woman must be a woman,” and does not hide her idea of what a woman should be: feminine, glamorous, and eager to impress the right man. Jola also states she believed an abusive and neglectful father was still better for her children’s upbringing than an absent one – a point her children vehemently disagree with her on. It is quite hard to square these conventional beliefs with Jola’s radically non-traditional desire to leave her husband, as well as live a life of independence and self-improvement. She is clearly a product of her generation, in regards to the source of her misery and outlook on how to escape it. Throughout, she tries to realize a way to leave her husband without actually divorcing him, the fear and social stigma still lingering over her decision-making, even in the face of such an atrocious relationship with no saving grace.
Jola is a wonderfully endearing character who so obviously deserves to cut the toxicity out of her life, but her attitude towards her own sex is evidence of the kind of generational self-hate which can destroy liberation movements. “Women need to work harder,” she says, implying it is a woman’s job to act more feminine and attract men. One could speculate that Jola would not support the demands of access to abortion in the recent protests, but the roots of the problems are the same: patriarchal dominance, locking genders into primitive roles, and minimizing the autonomy and freedom of women. The generational divide is stark, but both struggles are pulling in the same direction.
Most striking in the piece is the casualized approach to domestic violence, with almost all the people on-screen referring to it as commonplace and don’t query its prominence, even while questioning its effectiveness. Thus, the film does well to highlight a raft of issues facing women, not just in Poland but especially there. The protests in Poland have grown to incorporate even larger crowds, demonstrating against the regressive direction that the conservative government is taking the country more generally. It is not just women’s rights that are being skewered, but given the close history of Poland’s relationship with the Orthodox religion, it remains one of the most fundamental struggles.
What Goliszewska and Mateja have so stunningly captured is a heart-stirring portrayal of one woman – Jola – her regrets and, thankfully, her progress to a newfound life. The scenes are largely a series of revealing conversations with her warm, charismatic friends or her charming new partner Wojtek, peppered with beautiful scenery, such as rolling waves on the beach under a pink-hued sunset. It is suitably well-shot for the elegant main character and it is through these conversations that we can begin to understand how Jola’s approach to life has been formed. The way the film flows makes it easy to identify with Jola’s dreams of self-improvement, even if the situation itself is unique to her. In terms of Jola and Wojtek, it is refreshing to observe a budding relationship between two older people, unadorned by the complexities and contradictions of youth – they are happy to just exist together. It is slow-paced, and there is something nakedly honest about the bond they share.
With Lessons of Love, the directors have created a profound narrative of love and dissatisfaction with life, showing just how much emotional baggage can be carried over from generations before, even indirectly. The film is paced to draw out the mistakes of the past, with beautiful shots and intimate close-ups which accentuate the delicate subject matter and the raw honesty of the faces we see. The cinematography leaves every subtlety and body language intact, with all its sincerity and flaws. It is a beautiful sight to behold, an absolute joy to watch which leaves you thinking about the fate of Jola and Wojtek long after the film draws to a timely close. We are yet to see drastic social change within Poland, but it is fruitful that Lessons of Love provides a microscopic version of just one woman’s conflict, and victory, to break free of a burdened past.
