SWEET RUSH
Sweet rush has two scents. When crushed between your fingers its green ribbon,
creased in places, will emit a scent, a mild fragrance of ”water shaded by
trees”, with a subtle touch of oriental balms. But when you sniff deep into a
furrow, padded with something which resembles cotton wool, apart from the
incense-like fragrance you can smell muddy loam, rotting fish scales or just mud.
The smell of death.
When I was a child, sweet rush was used to line floors of hallways and balconies
and it reigned supreme during the days of jolly, green Pentecost holidays. At the
same time, sweet rush always brings to my mind the memory of my first friend
who drowned at the age of thirteen. It happened at the dawn of my life, in my
first childhood. So even today these dual scents evoke sad thoughts in me. The
end has some mysterious rapport with the beginning. The smell of childhood finds
its counterpart in the smell of senility; youth reflects in the green mirror of maturity.
Such is the story of Sweet Rush.
Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Tatarak
At first Sweet Rush, based on a short story by one of Poland’s most eminent writers, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, resembles a subtle and touching story of impossible love but Andrzej Wajda goes further, creating a multi-dimensional tale of love coming too late and death coming always too early. A middle-aged, highly cultured woman, MARTA (Krystyna Janda), married to a small town DOCTOR (Jan Englert) doesn’t know that she is terminally ill. She still mourns the death of her two sons, who died during the war. One day Marta meets a much younger man, a simple worker, BOGUŚ (Paweł Szajda), and is fascinated by his youth and innocence. Their “dates” at the shores of the river overgrown with sweet rush are marked by a mutual fascination with life coming to a premature end and life just entering its maturity. But fate plays a cruel trick on them: it is Boguś who dies first, drowning, entangled in the roots of the sweet rush he is carrying for Marta. But this is just a first layer of the story since Sweet Rush is also a film on making a film and it’s main character is the fictional Marta as well as the actress who plays her. Andrzej Wajda is intertwining Iwaszkiewicz’s story with reallife monologues of Krystyna Janda dealing with the premature death of her husband, the acclaimed cinematographer Edward Kłosiński, to whom the film is dedicated. The two women, Krystyna and Marta, thus become one – a deeply hurt human being who has to stand on her own and deal with the inescapable destiny of death.
CAST- Marta - Krystyna Janda
- Actress - Krystyna Janda
- Boguś - Paweł Szajda
- Marta’s Friend - Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieślak
- Halinka - Julia Pietrucha
- Doctor - Jan Englert
- director – Andrzej Wajda
- director of photography – Paweł Edelman
- composer – Paweł Mykietyn
- art director – Magdalena Dipont
- make-up – Marcin Rodak
- sound – Jacek Hamela
- editor – Milenia Fiedler
- post-production coordinator – Monika Lang
- production manager – Ewa Brodzka
- production supervisor – Małgorzata Fogel-Gabryś
- executive producer – Katarzyna Fukacz-Cebula
- producer – Michał Kwieciński
produced by:
Akson studio
Telewizja Polska S.A
Agencja Media Plus
co-financed by: Polish Film Institute
world sales in search contact:
Akson Studio Sp. z o.o.
22/30 Stępińska Str.,
00- 739 Warsaw
Poland
phone: +48 22 840 68 34
fax: +48 22 841 77 82
akson@mediafilm.pl
