I Can’t Be Close to You Without Suffering: The Cinema of Andrzej Żuławski, Part 4

In the seventh episode of Daughters of Darkness, Kat and Samm conclude their four-part exploration of the career of director Andrzej Zuławski, beginning with a discussion of La note bleue (1991). This unconventional biographical drama explores the fading relationship between Chopin and French writer George Sand, which is complicated by the intrusion of her teenage daughter, Solange (played by Zuławski’s then partner and longtime muse Sophie Marceau), who is also in love with Chopin. Next they look at Zuławski’s first Polish-made film in nearly two decades, the strange and sublime Szamanka (1996), about an uncontrollable young woman whose sexual relationship with an anthropologist begins to consume his life.

Finally, they explore La fidélité (2000), his final film with Marceau, which follows a headstrong artist and her difficult, but passionate marriage to a book publisher that is thrown into chaos when an attractive young photographer enters her life. They wrap up the episode with a discussion of Zuławski’s recent, final film, Cosmos (2015), an absolutely beautiful adaptation of Witold Gombrowicz’s absurdist novel of the same name, about two young men who discover an existential mystery at a boarding house in the countryside.