Emilia Ziólkowska

The monotonous everyday life of an elderly couple is recorded almost silently in a time frame of three days. A woman and a man who have lived their whole lives together no longer have anything in common, apart from habit and the arguments that separate them.

우체국에서 일하는 토멕은 같은 동네에 살고 있는 연상의 여인 막다에게 사랑을 느낀다. 막다를 몰래 지켜보던 토멕은 자신의 마음을 고백하기로 하지만, 이는 예상 못한 결과를 불러 온다.

Bearing traces of the old Anton Chekhov play The Wedding, The Contract is set during an "arranged" ceremony. The bride and groom barely know each other, but this matters not at all to their tradition-bound families. At the last minute, the bride balks. Only slightly nonplused, the groom's father, a status-seeking doctor, decides to go ahead with the expensive reception anyway. Polish director Krzysz Zanussi uses this scenario to stick it to capitalist corruption, and to society's destruction of the individual spirit. Leslie Caron, the one recognizable member of the cast, is outstanding as a wealthy, over-the-hill ballerina who happens to be a kleptomaniac.

A pair of lovers go off to a small hotel in a little town. The memories of war, however, intrude on their idyll. The girl and boy relive certain wartime experiences in flashback. She was a communist who drove a boy loving her to give himself up.