A widowed coroner who has seen so many dead bodies that he has become totally desensitized to them, his anorexic daughter who is shrinking away from her illness and an emotionally damaged therapist who believes she can communicate with the dead might not seem like the stuff that laughs are made of. But Szumowska somehow manages to do this in this very odd film that offers its own peculiar sense of humour.

After her successful Berlin competitor the In the Name Of this off-beat comedy comes as a surprise from this very serious Polish helmer.

Janusz played by Janusz Gajos is an overworked coroner who is called to crime scenes to examine the evidence. He is used to seeing bodies that have suffered all kinds of horrific deaths. But Janusz has a lot on his mind and when he is called to the scene of a suicide where a body is hanging from a tree he neglects to fully check that the victim is dead. In a scene replete with irony and black humour the “corpse” gets up and walks away while the police and Janusz are still working over the scene.

Janusz lives in Warsaw in a dreary apartment with his daughter Olga played by Justyna Suwala who is in her 20s and has a severe eating disorder as well as a very negative relationship with her father who struggles to communicate with her and is unable to give Olga the affection she lost when her mother died. Olga’s condition is played for laughs until her father realizes his grieving daughter might actually kill herself so he commits her to a clinic where she comes under the care of Anna played by Maja Ostaszewska a psychologist who has lost her own baby years before and spends her time in her flat at home calling up the spirits of the dead to communicate with.

Szumowska develops three different story lines that overlap each from the point of view of one of her three characters. Strange things like doors opening by themselves and music that switches on when no one is there begin to happen in Janusz’s flat that may or may not be connected with his dead wife. Olga joins Anna’s therapy group for sufferers of anorexia and bulminia and the ultra thin bodies of those in the group emphasize their self-harm of their own bodies. Meanwhile Anna continues her communication with the spirits of the dead and all three characters come together in an all night séance at the end of the film.

While this unlikely trio of characters play for laughs in this offbeat comedy they are also struggling to cope with the loss of loved ones. Szumowska explores the longing for intimacy and at the same time to fear of it and the self-harm people can inflict on themselves due to mental anguish. Body hovers between the rational world and our belief in the supernatural that we use to cope with the irrational emotional realities around us.

Director: Małgorzata Szumowska

Cast: Janusz Gajos, Maja Ostaszewska, Justyna Suwała, Ewa Dałkowska, Adam Woronowicz

Tomasz Ziętek, Małgorzata Hajewska-Krzysztofik, Ewa Kolasińska, Roman Gancarczyk

Władysław Kowalski

Supported by the Polish Film Institute

Poland