Expected more

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

We've seen various riffs on Hitchcock's 'Rear Window' since the release of the said masterpiece in 1954. We've seen Brian De Palma dive further into the voyeuristic core of 'Rear Window' and double down on the sleaziness to show us the dark underbelly of the show business lifestyle in Los Angeles in 'Body Double'. We've seen 'Disturbia' which was a bit of remake of 'Rear Window' specifically made mainly with the teenage/young adult demographic in mind. But in my opinion, out of all the films made subsequently that play around with the inherent 'peeping tom' gimmick of 'Rear Window', the only one(out of the ones I've seen) that distinguishes itself and deserves to be called a 'masterpiece' in its own right is Kieślowski's 'A Short Film About Love'.The shortened version of the film was used for Episode 6 for the epic mini-series 'Dekalog'. In my opinion both the shortened version as well as this longer film version have their own distinct personalities. The film works as a subversion of conventions as well as a deep exploration of the abstract concept of 'love'. It is a subversion of conventions, because we see an immensely sensitive depiction of a young man who is a primarily a peeping tom, and he spends his time secretly watching an attractive older woman who lives in the opposite apartment, which is inherently creepy. But the twist is that Tomek doesn't do it for sexual stimulation, he does it because watching this woman(Magda) go about her mundane daily routine gives him a different form of stimulation which he describes as 'love'. Once the central surface element of the peeping goes out of the way in the narrative, in the 2nd half of the film, Kieślowski doubles down on the concept of 'love' and starts asking questions through the two central characters Tomek and Magda. Does 'love' have a place to exist in the modern world or is it a thing of the past? Can a romantic connection between two human beings be forged only through sex with eventual orgasms, or is there something beyond the desires of the flesh, something more transcendent? The film also ends up answering these questions or at least Kieślowski gives us a clear indication of his attitude towards the concept of 'love' in his characteristic poetic ways.As I wrote earlier, there are various moments of poetry or poetic realism in the film that transcend grounded, realistic storytelling. Like the moment where Magda after an argument with one of her lovers spills the milk which Tomek delivered at her doorstep, all over her table as Tomek looks on from his apartment room via the telescope. Or the moment of pure joy after Tomek asks Magda out on a date,etc. With the ending, Kieślowski goes beyond poetic realism and ventures into territories of magical realism but without compromising the humane, tender tone of the film. The ending to the film actually is remarkably different to the ending of the shortened episode in 'Dekalog', but they both make the same thematic implication.The acting from the two central actors Olaf Lubaszenko and Grażyna Szapołowska is nothing short of special. Their individual scenes as well as the scenes that they share together are incredibly rich with subtlety, with pathos and with genuine emotions. Apart from the actors, something else that has to be admired for helping Kieślowski with the film is the beautiful music and score by Zbigniew Preisner which is rich with a sense of melancholic sweetness.Highly Recommended.

Before he stormed world cinema consciousness in the 1990s with the Three Colors trilogy (Blue, White, Red), the Polish genius Krzysztof Kieslowski directed a series of 10 short films for Polish TV collectively known as Dekalog. Based loosely on the ten commandments, two of these short films were later expanded to full length features. A Short Film About Love is one of them. A tale about a boy spying on and falling obsessively in love with an attractive older woman living across the street is compelling viewing. What, in lesser hands could well have been a ho-hum peeping tom movie, is turned by Kieslowski's sensitivity and understanding into a thing of beauty and radiance. An absolute gem. Watch it if you can — it will be an hour and a half well spent!

i watched it last night and it completely blew me away. what a brilliant, wonderful, heart touching,.... ( running out of adjectives ) film. while watching it a rarest thing happened to me, tears filled my eyes. last time i remember tears rolling down, it was while watching "to kill a mockingbird". it's actually a good thing that it is one of cinema's best kept secrets because there are people who don't have the heart to appreciate it. i am 19 and a straight guy and i can say for sure there are morons who would call it the crappiest, lousiest film ever. so at least it has been saved from those god forsaken creatures. anyway i just love this movie. my ratings 10/10

Nowadays love stories involve a traditional trajectory of boy meets girl and then moves on to "important" events or dates so finding this is like stumbling upon the needle in the haystack(no negative connotation intended). This movie manages to look past all the bs and straight to the point, raw love, building your life around it, and risking it all for it. Nowadays the protagonist would probably get labeled as "stalker" because that's probably how we've been raised to see these things. What i loved about this film is how is its attempt(which i think is successful) at destroying this correlation between love and sex. The Krzystof Kieslowski is no random director, and although the shots themselves are nothing spectacular, the way the movie flows together is and the music used matches the tone perfectly. The acting is spectacular, the main two characters are really believable and you really feel them develop. Though this movie is easy to recommend to everyone(who is of age), i would say only those with an open mind will be able to extract meaning from it.