An affirmation of old age in Grzegorz Fedorowiski`s film, “Almost Perfect.”
“Almost Perfect,” a story told by two elderly people who get married in a desperate escape from nothingness, speaks of loneliness in later years eliminated by mutual love. It is am intimate vision of the future of everyone who lives to a ripe old age.
The film, “Almost Perfect,” tells the story of Staszek and Maria, who have been married for barely five years. It is Staszek’s second marriage; his first wife betrayed him. For Maria, a spinster from Kielec, it is her first.
They are happy together and cannot imagine living separately. They are looking forward to a second childhood. Staszek and Maria are around eighty years old. They are not bothered with the problems of youth, work, and children. They live in a shared room in a nursing home. Both can boast of having lived lives that allow them to spend their later years in love and in good cheer.
What do they talk about? What are there daily relations like? How do they express love and respect to each other after they took their marriage vows? How do we see their wisdom?
The film is about love that arrives late in life, yet it can occur always and everywhere. Staszek and Maria met as lonely old people, found happiness in marriage, and are learning to understand and tolerate each other’s weaknesses, of which there are many in old age.
Their relationship shows the strength of human emotions and how they overcome the fear of loneliness. Only together are they almost perfect, complementing one another, almost perfect in presenting a different vision of old age, showing us its varied hues and shades.
The film’s inspiration were its main characters, whom the director met in a certain nursing home while making a completely different film. The director’s reflections on a dignified old age became the film’s inspiration, not to mention the splendid personalities of the main characters with whom he could discuss this subject.
