I drove over to the serene Sunset Marquis yesterday afternoon for a quick chat with Pawel Pawlikowski, the Polish-born director of Ida (Music Box Films, 5.2), the austere, undeniably brilliant black-and-white drama that I saw and raved about at last January’s Sundance Film Festival. I only had 20 minutes with the guy so all we did was bat the ball around. Here’s the mp3 of our discussion. Pawlikowski has a cultivated, easy-going aura, like that of a laid-back jazz musician or art curator or novelist. He’s one of those European cool-cat types with a discreet eye for the ladies — you can see that in Ida and his earlier films, most notably Last Resort (’00), My Summer of Love (’04) and Woman in the Fifth (’11). And so we naturally discussed Ida’s quietly alluring lead actress, Agata Trzebuchowska, who is presently in school and is not, even after Ida, with any particular interest in an acting career. Until recently, that is, when a big-name director (whom Pawlikowski declined to name) asked her to audition for something. So maybe.
Ida director & co-writer Pawel Pawlikowski at rear outdoor restaurant attached to Sunset Marquis hotel — Wednesday, 4.23, 2:45 pm.
