Red Yellow Pink

Ok, so this can’t have had much of a budget but surely auteur Jolanta Warpechowski could have relied less on some simplistic stereotypes and maybe taken a few risks with the characterisations? This follows the story of “Maciej” (David Paul) whose fairly devout Catholic mum (Agnieszka Salamon) crosses herself at every opportunity whilst his Jewish dad (Wojciech Galzinski) takes an altogether more pragmatic view of life. That’s probably just as well because their teenage son has a secret! His moving in with “Dawid” (Adrian Koszewski) is just the start of their problems though, as it turns out that his previous boyfriend has been an early victim of AIDS and it looks like this family might have to face something similar on their own more personal and conflicted horizons soon. The question is, can they forgive and reunite in spite of their fairly fundamental and visceral differences? There are a few scenes between the boys that are quite touching, and the lively effort from Galzinski breathes the odd bit of life into this, but it’s attempts to spotlight the religious, hypocritical and attitudinal differences amongst the family are disappointingly shallow and the positively pedestrian dialogue is seemingly content not to really try to develop the characters beyond the visually pretty but otherwise emotionally undercooked. Simply, it runs out of steam and ends because it has to, not because there is any originality or clarity of message to the piece. What red, yellow and pink have to do with anything isn’t clear, although that maybe resonate more in Polish, and the film is easy enough to let wash over you - but that’s about the height of it.

This movie was billed as a struggle between a gay son and his ultra-religious mother. Meh, kind of... Yes, the son was gay and his mother finds out and she doesn't react well at all, in fact there is a lot of hostility in one scene, then he leaves home and only sees her two more times afterwards, at which time they don't really talk...so saying that this was the premise of the movie is a bit of an oversell. It really is more about him coming to terms with living his own life and adjusting to having HIV which his former boyfriend infected him with. It is a very sad movie with no happy ending and a few plot holes thrown into the mix as well.