Polonaise - Nicole van Kilsdonk

Year:
2002
Length:
76 minutes (television version) & 90 minutes (theatre version)

Tagline:
Lighthearted feature film about the interaction between people stuck in a traffic jam.

Logline:
A tragicomical film about four different cars and their passengers who get stuck in a traffic jam. There they clash with each other and themselves. A film about making choices and about waiting in a traffic jam, in life and in love.

Synopsis:
The film Polonaise is set almost entirely in a traffic jam somewhere in the new future. In this future, long traffic jams are a fact of life and all kinds of people take advantage of them, so there are traffic-jam hairdressers, traffic-jam caterers, traffic-jam masseurs, traffic-jam call-girls and somewhere in the traffic jam is a traffic-jam radio pirate who everyone listens to and who eventually brings people together. The film follows several people in the traffic jam at close range. These people have nothing in common, apart from the fact that they are stuck in the same traffic jam.
Music plays an important role in the film.

RAP. Loud rap from the speakers of a stolen Saab; Polish Maciek has found love, but can’t get a permit to practice it, so he has rammed a house with a bulldozer. The house that should have been his future. From pure impotence. Impotence about permits, counters and regulations. Now all he wants is to flee the police and even his one true love Hilde (Tamar van den Dop) whom he has had his first quarrel with..

CHANSON. Romantic Walloon pop music from the radio of the Acadiane. Wick (Freek Brom) and Robyn (Nadja Hüpscher), a car hater and a car freak in one and the same marriage. They have only just set out but are already getting on each other’s nerves. Robyn wants an “arranged divorce”. “Hypocrite,” thinks Wick. There are limits to what he might do for a parking permit and a soft-top. The question is, how long will they stick it out in this French biscuit tin…

DISCO. Charlie (Hajo Bruins), died-in-the-wool music plugger and owner of the stolen Saab, is sharing his son’s car today and has to put up with his choice of music. Charlie loves the road and the traffic jam even more. Here he can phone without interruption, but above all he can meet up with “stress masseuse” Nena. But his chronic back pain makes it clear that his life is not all it ought to be, even if he talks his way out of anything…

COUNTRY. That’s all there is for the very pregnant Hilde in the Panda belonging to her sister Eef (played by Marnie Blok). A romantic and a cynic together in one car. Hilde has just had a major tiff with Maciek and wants to go to her parents to have her baby there. Eef says she has lost faith in true love. She flirts with anything going, preferably married men, but in her heart of hearts she is jealous of Hilde’s true love…

In the traffic jam the characters clash with each other and themselves. They are put on hold and forced to survey and change their situation. All of this under the watchful eye, or at least the voice, of the Radio Pirate.
With Maciek and Hilde get each other before the traffic jam starts moving again and will they all pick up their lives?

Cast:
Tamar van den Dop (Hilde)
Marnie Blok (Eef)
Przemek Sadowski (Maciek)
Hajo Bruins (Charlie)
Freek Brom (Wick)
Nadja Hüpscher (Robyn)

Crew:
direction: Nicole van Kilsdonk
script: Nicole van Kilsdonk, Olivier Nilsson-Julien, Justus van Oel
camera: Mick van Rossum
sound: Kees de Groot
art direction: Jolein Laarman
costumes: Margriet Procee
editing: Denise Janzée
sound design & re-recording mix: Michel Schöpping / Klink
music: Fons Merkies
laboratory: Cineco
image post-production: Valkieser Capital Images
production manager: Ben Bouwmeester
line producer: Annemiek van Gorp
producer: René Scholten & Digna Sinke

this film is a co-production of SNG Film with KRO televisie in the framework of Telefilm

this film is financially supported by:
CoBO-fonds
Ministerie van OC & W
Stimuleringsfonds Nederlandse Culturele Omroepproducties
Geneva-Europe Prizes