KEBAB & HOROSCOPE

The employees of a carpet shop in Warsaw are each to be put through their own personal cost/benefit analysis, by none other than two “marketing experts”, whose professional experience seems to lie more in the fields of gastronomy (a kebab chef) and quackery (a horoscope author). Over the course of three chapters, all involved prove that, though they may be totally uneconomical, they are however absolutely loveable in their absurdity – as experts for lapsed love affairs, dashed hopes and existential seclusion. Transformed into group therapy, the marketing workshop at first yields small successes: a suicide is prevented, the inconspicuous intern celebrates the film’s sole carpet sale, her newly retired mother seems to be getting closer to the love of her life. Any permanent effects of the consultants’ unorthodox methods still have to be proven though. In this stylised feature film debut from the young Polish director and his Norwegian cameraman, with its cool blue Cinemascope images, sparse dialogue, visual humour and long, calm shots, one finds one’s self, as an observer, smiling and suffering along with the characters. Aki Kaurismäki meets Varsovian melancholy.