Never Gonna Snow Again (2020)

Film: Never Gonna Snow Again (2020)

Stars: Alec Utgoff, Maja Ostaszeswka, Agata Kulesza, Weronika Rosati

Directors: Malgorzata Szumowska & Michel Englert

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

The AFI European Union Film Showcase is currently underway, and as a result I'm trying to catch a few titles that I might otherwise not watch, for a few reasons.  First, I love movies, and so why not immerse myself with some festival titles when I have the chance?  Second, I am in desperate need of quality films as we wind down 2020; I know the pandemic has made this a bit of a bummer for moviegoers in general but let's be real here-2020 has not been a good year for movies (possibly the weakest since 2004), and I am willing to look in unconventional places to find some titles that might be hidden gems.  And third, the AFI has a few titles that are in contention for this year's International Feature Film Oscar race, and it felt like the perfect time to investigate these titles, starting with the Polish submission this year, Never Gonna Snow Again.

(Spoilers Ahead) I knew next to nothing about this title (that's going to be true of a few of these films as we investigate them over the next two weeks), other than it was Poland's submission, and that the reviews were solid.  For a grounding in the plot, it's essentially the story of Zhenia (Utgoff, whom you probably would know best as Alexei on Stranger Things), an immigrant who has traveled from Ukraine to Poland and is now a masseuse for a wealthy gated community.  Day after day, Zhenia goes to their homes, and tries to give them a sense of balance, seemingly with at first intuitive, and then eventually almost superhuman powers (he's able to have them go under deep hypnosis, and is able to try & give them what they most desire).

The film is quite cerebral, and probably its best comparison would be Under the Skin a few years back from Jonathan Glazer.  Much is hinted at from Zhenia's childhood, where he may have gotten some sort of powers from living near Chernobyl (he is referred to as radioactive multiple times), but the supernatural elements are fascinating only when taken in conjunction with the conversations about classism and xenophobia.  As an immigrant, a poor one at that, Zhenia is treated with a bit of callous politeness by his clients.  They all adore him, but they view him as something they can use.  The women regularly treat him as a sex object, something to be admired & ogled but not a threat to their way-of-life.  They care little about him as a person, and more as a means-to-an-end, and oftentimes give him humiliating tasks, including one scene where he massages a dog that clearly just has bad gas.

The directors play with our preconceptions about Zhenia, though (and perhaps our internalized xenophobia) by making sure that his mystery is to be confused with malice-the audience is meant to assume that there will be a reckoning for these people, that Zhenia must want revenge or money or status to go with his treatment of them, but as the movie unfolds it turns out he doesn't want any of these things, at least not to stoop to their level.  Utgoff's best gifts as an actor are making him seem like a blank slate, even though there are hints of who he really is in different corners of the film (like when he starts dancing a modern ballet while one of his clients is under hypnosis).  But his great performance is perhaps too good for the movie itself-when in the end Zhenia disappears and it snows again (the villagers are worried it will never snow again, part of an underlying environmental theme to the picture that feels too hit-or-miss to work), we aren't really sure what it means for the villagers.  One could interpret that the film's ending is of people who had a chance for change & didn't take it (like we have with climate change), but that might be too generous given what came before it.  Still, this is an engrossing, enigmatic movie that just misses the mark on the ending, but one I hope gets into Oscar's race, as it's hard to see them pulling five films that are all better than this drama.