The Maids of Wilko (Polish: Panny z Wilka) is a 1979 Polish film directed by Andrzej Wajda. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. "Maids" is used in the sense of "maidens", hence another translation could be The Maidens of Wilko.
At the age of 40, Wiktor Ruben (Daniel Olbrychski) returns to the family property (Wilko) where he'd spent his late teens/early twenties as a tutor of young sisters. Now they are all women - mostly wives and mothers. Wiktor discovers that Fela, once the closest to him, is now dead for some time and other sisters aren't too keen to talk about her and her grave is rather forgotten. He is also disappointed with how all the women have changed. Julia (Anna Seniuk), now a mother of two, doesn't resemble his first object of love and desire she once was and doesn't show him an affection he might expected. Jola (Maja Komorowska), seemingly unhappy in her marriage, chases him and makes fun of it, until he doesn't bring the painful memories of the past. Kazia (Krystyna Zachwatowicz), a divorcee - thus treated like less worthy than others - is the most demanding partner of his intelectual reflections while Zosia (Stanisława Celińska) is - as always - distant and outspoken. That leaves him with Tunia (Christine Pascal) who was only a child when he previously knew her but now resembles Fela. Wiktor spends time in Wilko but isn't able to see that his return restored once forgotten dreams and hopes of the sisters...
The film is based on a popular short story written in the early 1930s by famous Polish poet Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz who even appears as himself near the end of the movie. Andrzej Wajda previously filmed another short story of Iwaszkiewicz, The Birch Wood in 1970 and would go to film yet another, Sweet Rush (film), in 2009. This particular film features impressive cast, very good (although non-original) score (music of Karol Szymanowski, who was a friend and cousin of Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz) and is otherwise technically brilliant. It received some awards in Poland and was nominated for an Oscar which it lost to The Tin Drum (film) (also starring Olbrychski). Much of this happened because of deliberately avoiding anything that would trigger censorship from the communist authorities that governed Poland at that time. It is quite possible that the whole production was the results of games of influence inside the government-controlled film monopoly in Poland. It appears that the director Andrzej Wajda had built around himself enough buffer space to produce a clearly anti-communist film just two years later, Man of Iron.
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