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You’re in excellent hands with this wicked class satire about a very special immigrant masseur and the affluent individuals who grow besotted with him.
One foggy morning, a mysterious physical therapist named Zhenia arrives from the east to ply his trade in a wealthy Polish gated community. He’s from the Ukraine, and something special radiates from his magic hands as he moves around his fold-out table, and around his clients’ plush but pretty much identical homes, with a ballet dancer’s grace. The people he services – a bone-weary mother, a lonely dog lover, a dying man and his wife, a widow – soon come to depend on his transformative touch and company, but what is he truly doing in this prosperous yet soulless community?
With hints of magic realism, absurd humour and the Gothic, co-directors Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert shape their class satire – Poland’s submission for the 2021 Best International Feature Film Oscar – into something poignant, sly and visually dreamlike. Zhenia, performed with relish by Stranger Things’ Alec Utgoff, is both innocent and knowing, pragmatic and otherworldly, as he provides the various sorts of relief that his disaffected clients crave. Sit back and submit to his mesmerising ministrations.
“Somewhere between Twin Peaks and Pasolini’s Theorem … A venture which heads all the way into the territory of surreal satire to eerie and intriguing effect.” – Screen Daily