Director Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Ida,” set in Poland less than 20 years after World War II, has the precise, image-building control of a short story. The film is both delicate and unforgettable.
The black-and-white compositions and the lighting at times evoke religious paintings, even as the cars and shabby nightclubs announce that the 1960s are here. Young Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) is about to take her vows as a nun when she is abruptly told that she is really Ida, a Jewish girl hidden in the convent as a baby. Ida has a living aunt, Wanda (Agata Kulesza), a ranking Communist who is determined to find out what happened to their family. So the two ill-matched women take to the road.
Both actresses are extraordinary, but Kulesza — bitter, sarcastic and tragic — carries the movie’s soul.