Anna

This first feature by Polish stage director Yurek Bogayevicz stars Sally Kirkland and Paulina Porizkova, who play an emigre movie star down on her luck in New York and the idolizing refugee she takes in. The screenplay is by Andrzej Wajda associate Agnieszka Holland, from a story by her and Bogayevicz. A curious blend of the plot of All About Evewith an emphasis on the humiliations of acting and middle age that is appreciably more blunt than the originaland an account of the political and cultural alienation of Czech emigres, the film lives mainly through its performances: Kirkland is especially powerful as the eponymous lead, offering conceivably the most remarkable impersonation of an eastern European by an American on record. Although the film climaxes in some rather forced melodrama, the eastern European perspective on the New York theater world has much of the satirical sharpness that only an outsider’s viewpoint can bring to it. With Robert Fields, Ruth Maleczech, and Stefan Schnabel. (JR)

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