HUH? WEIRD, farcical, broad – one might as well attempt to review a bicycle pump on these pages as this Polish bodice-ripper. Sluby Panienskie (Maiden's Vows)is an 1832 mock-heroic poem by Aleksander Fredro, adapted here into a racy pantomime with a self- reflexive, contemporary twist.
At least we think that’s what the film-makers were going for. How else might one account for the sudden cutaways to the principals sipping coffee from paper cups, or the frequent appearance of mobile phones in a pre-Victorian romcom?
The plot, when it isn’t being wildly anachronistic, is old by geological standards. Two 19th-century babes swear off men just as their father arranges husbands for them. And who could blame them? The witty, stupendously beautiful Clara (Marta Zmuda-Trzebiatowska) simply can’t abide the overbearing affections of her intended, a man-boy named Albin who makes The Hulk look mature and restrained. Her timid sister (Edith Olszowka) is lumbered with a visiting Warsaw dandy who can’t keep his eyes open when she speaks. Shenanigans soon follow.
Somewhere in the music hall comings and goings, things seem to work out for everybody concerned. Frankly, it's hard to tell. Unlike, say, Michael Winterbottom's similarly themed A Cock and Bull Story, there are no clear indicators to denote shifts between diegetic action and whispered asides.
The players occasionally adopt the elegant octosyllables of the source material and produce the same dramatic rhythms as Pride and Prejudice.They are equally likely to ogle naked ladies and demonstrate uses for a chamber pot. We can't imagine that Austen fans will approve of the urinating or the whoring, roaring romantic hero, but Benny Hill fans might dig it.
