It is a story of a shocking crime, but also a image of a contemporary life of the average polish family. In an interview given to magazine "Cinema" (No. 5/2010), director Paweł Sala explains his need to resort an unusual narrative flow:
"Telling the story backwards allows building scenes in different ways - it's a bit as if it had taken a step back to certain events and pulled out those most important moments. I didn't have to fully develop every scene, I could just play them out as somewhat meaningful signals, showing that once again something tragic happened in this family. 'Mother Teresa' is basically a anti-mystery story deprived of dramatic scenes. It couldn't be this way if it weren't for the backward plot. The murder is already revealed at the beginning of the movie. Instead of focusing on the crime, I was able to show the simple, everyday life which lead to this incident. I think that in many families it comes to a symbolic murder of one of the parents - even though no actual physical crime is not commited."
The movie presents an average family from Warsaw. The father, a professional military officer, leaves for a mission in Afghanistan, abandoning his three children, a dying relative and his wife Teresa who is left to take care of everything. The woman gets a new job as a insurance salesperson, even though she has to take care of her little daughter and her older son Martin, a high school student who is starting to spin out of control under the influence of his older brother Arthur, who has just graduated high school and is in pursuit of himself and his place in this world, but can't find a suitable college nor a decent job. He cultivates the certain idea, or rather obsession, that he can take control of someone else's mind and this obsession grows as he's searches for a way to prove his unique abilities. Meanwhile, the father returns - he is not himself and seeems broken down. He can't find the strength to stand up to his elder son and after he leaves the army, he moves out of the house after another confrontation with Arthur. The risky cash investment from his mission comes to a fail, leaving Teresa completely alone and lost, which pushes her to spend more and more time taking care of homeless cats. Then comes the day when Arthur decides to commit his "incredible" stunt, which brings the family tragedy to its culminating point.
The faintly outlined plot and deliberately reversed chronology of events requires not only a confident director's push, but also the strongest performers. Mateusz Kościukiewicz (plays Arthur, the personification of evil) and Filip Garbacz (the naïve younger brother), comprising an outstanding performance. The two of them received many awards at the this year's Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. They managed to create a image, which at the first glance appears normal, but soon gains a extraordinary intensity, or more like a articulate, terrifying acuity. Even though the murder obviously seems to be the main issue, Sala manages not to focus on the murder itself, directing the narrative towards the more nostalgic past. Primarily it's a image of modernity - captured on the streets of Warsaw and through the more subliminal ways in which modernity envokes evil. "Cinema" magazine's (No. 9/2010) reviewer sums up his thoughts on the movie:
"What we have here is a war that destroys the characters and then the voracious capitalism (…) We have a mental illness which leads one to raise one's hand at one's own mother. There is a disturbed system of traditional values and the eternal state of uncertainty of tomorrow, which causes to believe in a irrational phenomena. Then there is the gallery of strong women, which face off against not only a young psychopath, but a deadly disease too. And the weak men, fleeing from their problems into depression or alienation. Or the kids, fascinated by the world of computer games, who don't really recognise the boundary between reality and virtual reality. The junction of all these selected areas by Paweł Sala creates evil. Lurid but banal at the same time, with the oh how annoying banality. And even the most amusing narrative structure can't change this."
The film is Paweł Sala's feature debut. Sala is a dramatist, screenwriter, and filmmaker. He graduated from the Katowice Film School in 1985. His filmmaking career spans: Gang Królowej Śniegu, Mortal Kombajn, Ifigenia - moja siostra. He directed his own play Od dziś będziemy dobrzy for the Television Theatre. Co-founder of the G8 group of dramatists. He was twice a finalist at the Polish edition of the Hartley-Merrill script competition. An author of several documentary films including Statyści, produced on the film set of Roman Polański's The Pianist.
- Matka Teresa od kotów / Mother Teresa of Cats, Poland 2010. Written and directed by Paweł Sala, photography: Mikołaj Łebkowski, music: Marcin Krzyżanowski, production design: Kasia Jarnuszkiewicz, costume design: Monika Jagodzińska, editing by Agnieszka Glińska of the Polish Association of Film Editors (PSM), sound: Wacław Pilkowski, production manager: Maja Zupok. Cast: Ewa Skibińska (Teresa), Mariusz Bonaszewski (Hubert), Mateusz Kościukiewicz (Artur), Filip Garbacz (Marcin).
Author: Konrad J. Zarębski, August 2010.