This review is part of our coverage of the 2020 Austin Polish Film Festival. TRIPLE TROUBLE streams for free from Nov. 21 - Dec. 6 — click here to watch the film and check out the rest of the lineup!

Triple Trouble, Marta Karwowska’s 2020 follow-up to her 2017 Double Trouble, opens like an inverted The Goldfinch (which was a terrible fucking book, don’t @ me*). There is a transcendent painting, Poland’s only Monet, that is the focal point of a new exhibition. For purposes unknown and placed by forces mysterious, a bomb explodes behind the painting on opening night, demolishing the treasure in the process. Julka and Olek, a sleuth-y young pair and maybe teenage sweethearts, are on the case.

Prior to this moment, we are treated to a setting of the mood by way of a museum night guard cruising through galleries on a Segway while Pink Panther-esque flute trills sneak through the soundtrack. Fancy a caper? Cue a stealthy intruder infiltrating the ventilation system and laser dancing their way up to the wall where the genuine Monet hangs, subsequently absconding with the priceless artifact! There is a lovely shot then, one that I’m surprised we don’t see more often, where the rogue plants an explosive device all covered in wires and sporting a gigantic red countdown into a crawlspace, pulling the hatch closed as they recede from frame. The bomb slides into shadow, leaving only the bright 15:00:00 ticking down in the dark. *Shiver!*

We quickly catch on to the bait-and-switch, though. This is no caper but rather a pendulum that swings between two points: a Grimm-style fairy tale where the children are real and so is the peril, and a deeply existential tale of loyalty, jealousy, fear of inadequacy, and loss featuring 13-year-olds as the avatars through which these emotions are explored. When Julka, Olek, and Fela (the titular triple and the source of much interest for Olek and grief for Julka) start following the clues, one leads them to a witch of sorts who sits Julka down for a haircut. No matter how many times I see this scene played out across cinema, the vulnerability and power imbalance is never diminished — Julka sits there, neck exposed, while the woman dances her long sharp fingernails here and there. Next she’ll be crawling straight into the oven for treats!

On the existential front, Julka engages in some behaviors we typically only see in the movies from tired, jaded adults confronting their mortality — she soul-dives into her reflection’s eyes in the mirror of an austere bathroom while splashing water on her haggard face, she scrolls through pictures Olek has adoringly captured of Fela on the false pretense of looking for marketplace clues, she walks through the woods alone to music only she can hear in a pained, night-moves sort of way. It’s striking seeing real pain painted across her face, pain not handled with kid gloves or softened by impending hijinks.

That isn’t to say there aren’t bravura sequences here. One in particular stands out: the trio plus an adult they’ve teamed up with are fleeing the witch (who they suspect of stealing the painting) and the driver perpetrates a slo-mo destruction derby through a camp of peacefully stoned hippies. Now, this is probably just a limitation of mine, a function of time and circumstance in which I have not seen many non-American films primarily made for young people. The qualities I’ve come to expect from movies built for children and young adults, even the ones that deal with trauma and pain of various calibers, aren’t present here; there’s no Harriet the Spy goo-splattering, there’s no Hunger Games histrionics, there’s no Stand By Me adult consciousness reflecting on the situation, there’s no golly-gee to this at all, really. These kids do play, the movie doesn’t turn them into tiny adults, but their play is not sensationalized or infantilized.

This all raises a point which is a little self-indulgent, but hey. I’m writing this review so I’m gonna write what I want! I’ve touched on almost none of the plot here and focused almost entirely on what I felt was unusually dense and realistic pain generated between these three children... Does a film review have a responsibility to give a reader some sense of what happens in the film, or is it acceptable for the reviewer to simply drill down on some aspect of the film they thought especially noteworthy? I mean, I’m certainly only doing the latter of those, but I do wonder about it. I think for a fake-out film like this, where the plot seems to function mostly as a MacGuffin propelling the pain and reconciliation among a trio of young humans, it might be the only way to go.

Stray thoughts

Julka’s sweater at the end of the film, with big blue-fingernailed hand-shaped epaulettes, is PRIME.
I love a film that gets the intricacies of frenemies right and believable.
The party at the end of this film reminds me of this pitch-perfect Levis commercial from a decade ago that talked me into getting my first pair of skinny jeans. Ah, youth!
*I read it compulsively! And by the end was furious at my gullibility and the deception that had been thrust upon me! No, I haven’t seen the movie and won’t. Yes, I did LOVE The Secret History.

Austin Polish Film Festival 2020: TRIPLE TROUBLE / TARAPATY 2