MARIUSZ WLODARSKI

NEVER GONNA SNOW AGAIN (2021)
Starring Alec Utgoff, Weronika Rosati, Agata Kulesza, Maja Ostaszewska, Katarzyna Figura, Borys Szyc and Jaroslaw Milner. Directed by Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert.

One grey, foggy morning, a mysterious young man, Zhenia, crosses the border from Ukraine into Poland, carrying only a massage table. When faced with a staid official at Warsaw’s immigration office, he secures the necessary residence permit by simply taking the man’s head in his huge, soft hands and massaging him into a trance.

Zhenia soon establishes himself with the well-to-do residents of a suburban gated community of identical white McMansions, where his unique talents quickly become in demand. Among the clientele are Maria, who finds a calm in Zhenia that her hostile children and husband don’t provide; derisive widow Ewa who lusts after the masseur in more ways than she’ll dare admit; a woman obsessed by her three bulldogs who pleads for them to also be treated, and Wika, who has invested the last hopes for her cancer-stricken husband in Zhenia’s seemingly magical fingertips. But as he navigates through the affairs, drinking, drug-taking and games of neighbourly one-upmanship, no one thinks to ask Zhenia about his own concerns, least of all his mysterious origins.