Poignant low-key drama Erratum, the feature debut of Polish multihyphenate Marek Lechki, gracefully chronicles a man’s attempt to address regrets big and small from the recent and distant past. Offering the hope that it’s never too late to repair broken relationships, this small but affecting film has reaped multiple awards on the festival circuit.
Thirty-four-year-old Michal (Tomasz Kot) has a boring job in a Warsaw accounting firm, and with wife Magda (Karin Kuniekiewicz) is preparing for their son’s first communion. When his boss asks him to pick up a car in the ancient port city of Szczecin, the return to his birthplace sparks an unwelcome opportunity to revisit a painful and still unresolved portion of his past.
Repaying close attention, Lechki’s intelligent screenplay doesn’t lay all its cards on the table at once. Details of Michal’s former life gradually emerge as he accidentally encounters a former bandmate (Tomasz Radawiec) and visits the ailing father (a heartrending Ryszard Kotys) from whom he’s long been estranged.
After an unexpected turn of events keeps Michal in Szczecin longer than planned, Lechki confirms his affinity for the quirky rhythms of small-town life he displayed in his film school graduation project, My Town. Superior supporting turns from Jerzy Rogalski as a kindly mechanic and Janusz Michalowski as a surprisingly reasonable policeman add to this film’s wonderfully humanist feel.
Variety
Marek Lechki will attend the screening.
Presented in cooperation with the Embassy of Poland in Dublin.
