Last Resort (2000)
Directed by Paweł Pawlikowski
Tanya leaves Moscow with her street-wise 10-year-old son Artiom to meet her English fiancée in London. But after he fails to turn up at the airport, Tanya, intent on staying in England, is forced to apply for political asylum and transferred to Stonehaven, a grimy former seaside resort where refugees are housed. Tanya gradually develops a relationship with an amusement arcade manager, who helps them escape. She must then decide whether to stay with him or return to Russia.
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What critics compared Last Resort to
Pawlikowski (Last Resort and My Summer of Love) tells the story of Ida, an 18-year-old novitiate at an austere Polish convent.
He has won many awards for two early features, “ Last Resort ” (2000), and “My Summer of Love” (2004, starring Emily Blunt and Natalie Press).
Filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski (“Last Resort,” “My Summer of Love”), who has been based in Britain, returns to his native Poland for this of blend of road tale, detective story, and coming-of-age drama, shot in period-evoking black-and-white.
After finding success with British films such as "Last Resort" and "My Summer of Love," Polish-born director Pawel Pawlikowski returns to his homeland with "Ida," which is just as austere and demanding as you'd expect a black-and-white film about a Polish nun to be.
Born in Poland and educated in England, writer/director Pawel Pawlikowski (“My Summer of Love,” “Last Resort,” “The Woman in the Fifth”) tells a touching, personal story of spiritual identity, set against the Holocaust, the Stalinist period and its continuing after-effects.
Director Pawlikowski (“Last Resort,” “My Summer of Love”) works closely with Agata Kulesza and Agata Trzebuchowska to present this moving and intimate story.
Which is unfortunate, as Pawel Pawlikowski's first film, "Last Resort," a Kafkaesque tale of a Russian mother and son trapped immigration limbo, was truly remarkable.
Under the unadorned but intensely atmospheric direction of Pawel Pawlikowski (whose similarly visceral "Last Resort" was released in 2001), the inexperienced young actresses give such unaffected performances that the film develops a voyeuristic quality as the girls' relationship takes on the momentum of a runaway train.
In the reflective moments between their giddy bike rides and drunken strolls, they seem happy that they found each other, but there's more at work here, and it's revealed when director Pawel Pawlikowski (Last Resort) slowly, deliberately pulls back to find the bitterness waiting beneath the sunny title.
As his previous feature, 2001's memorable "Last Resort," demonstrated, Pawlikowski is a second-skin filmmaker, someone whose sensitivity to people enables him to truly get inside his characters' private worlds, to know them better than they sometimes know themselves.
Pawel Pawlikowski’s previous film was the critically acclaimed drama Last Resort (which also starred Paddy Considine), back in 2000.
Mona (newcomer Nathalie Press, resembling Toni Collette crossed with Sissy Spacek) takes her motorless scooter out into the Yorkshire countryside to get away from her born again brother Phil (Paddy Considine, "Cinderella Man," "Last Resort"), who's turning their pub into a revival meeting.