MY WONDERFUL WANDA
A Polish single mother becomes comically entangled in a wealthy Swiss family’s laundry list of drama when she is employed to care for their patriarch.
Sitting atop his Ivory Tower (or, more accurately, bedridden in his edenic country home), wealthy Swiss businessman Josef Wegmeister-Gloor (André Jung) is recovering from a stroke. Josef finds frustration in being coddled by the likes of his patronizing wife Elsa (Marthe Keller, PFF29’s MY LITTLE SISTER), his Peter Pan-syndrome son and workaholic daughter. His only solace and companionship is found in his live-in caretaker Wanda (Agnieszka Grochowska), a Polish single mother who must leave her struggling family to tend to Josef and some “light” housekeeping. When her other means of income are shockingly discovered, Wanda becomes deeply, and often comically, entangled in the family’s long-gestating history of resentment and buried secrets. Balancing poignancy with wit, Grochowska’s Wanda and Keller’s Elsa are remarkable, dynamic foils taking control of a situation being thrust upon them by the callow men. Though Swiss director/co-writer Bettina Oberli revels in taking shots at a family so out-of-touch, her shrewd, but lovingly vulnerable heroine grounds the film by portraying the feeling of otherness amidst such riches.
CAST: Agnieszka Grochowska, Marthe Keller, André Jung, Birgit Minichmayr
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