A Hemisphere Films (Luxembourg)/Opus Film (Poland) production in association with TVP/Canal + Poland/Luxembourg Film Fund/Eurimages. Produced by Stephan Carpiaux, Wioletta Gradkowska, Piotr Dzieciol. Executive producers, Lukasz Dzieciol, Ewa Puszczynska. Directed by Franco De Pena. Screenplay,De Pena, Tomaz Kepski, Chris Burdza, from a story by De Pena.
With: Anna Cieslak, Arno Frisch, Rafal Mackowiak, Matthieu Carriere, Dominique Pinon, Barbara Walkowna.
(Polish, English, German dialogue)
The real-life slave traffic of young women by their supposed boyfriends has spawned several films, not the least of them Lukas Moodysson's splendid "Lilya 4-ever." Franco de Pena's more simplistic heroic spin, "Your Name Is Justine," celebrates one woman's struggle to retain her autonomy in the face of brutal male exploitation. Visceral violence, well-paced action, and sly sexual power reversals could spell commercial potential if pic were not half in Polish, and thus caught in the no-man's land between arthouse and mainstream.
Mariola (Ann Cieslak) is as strong and smart as she is beautiful. She not only stands up to a bullying boss to earn a job as a butcher in a pork factory, but defends her weaker girlfriends in the process.
When seemingly tender boyfriend Artur (Rafal Mackowiak) says he wants to take her to Germany to meet his father, she joyfully embarks on a three-week vacation. But once in Berlin, the romantic trip suddenly turns hellish as Artur leads her to an abandoned building and sells her outright to three soulless thugs who beat and rape her.
When sheer brutality proves insufficient to break her spirit, death threats to her beloved grandmother (Barbara Walkowna), isolation and starvation are added to the mix. But ultimately, it is kindness, or at least the illusion of kindness, that does her in, as one of her indoctrinators, Niko (Arno Frisch), plays "good cop."
Helmer Pena closely details how human beings can be reduced to quiescent commodities through fear and deprivation, here represented by the titular renunciation of Mariola's true identity and her adoption of another name, "Justine" (shades of Sade?), and of another tongue, English, that is not even the language of the country she has been brought to.
Pena has entrusted the movie-defining role of Mariola to tyro actress Cieslak, who appears in virtually every frame of the film. Cieslak shines as the loving, intelligent and confident Mariola, and is also completely convincing as a proactive heroine, who devises desperate, sometimes ingenious methods of escape.
But in purely reactive mode, the inexperienced Cieslak tends toward a fairly uninflected dazed shock and/or a stubborn autism which wears thin fast and does not have the depth as, for example, Jennifer Jason Leigh's more variegated stages of passivity in her memorable white-slave star turn in the televid sleazefest "Girls of the White Orchid."
Unfortunately, outside of its well-orchestrated action sequences, "Justine" is rather one-note visually as well.
Tech credits are pro.
Camera (color, widescreen), Arek Tomiak; editor, Jaroslaw Kaminski; music, Nikos Kypourgos; production designer, Christina Schaffer; sound (Dolby Digital), Jan Freda. Reviewed at Montreal World Film Festival (competing), Aug. 30, 2005. Running time: 97 MIN.
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