Critics have exhausted themselves praising this film, so I am in the extreme minority (a bit of an unpleasant place to be), but I found Ida to be a beautiful bore. Set in Poland in the early 1960s, the film focuses on Anna (the inscrutable Agata Trzebuchowska), a quiet and sheltered novice who, on the eve of her vows, is sent to visit an estranged living relative by the Mother Superior. The relative, her aunt Wanda (fiery scene thief Agata Kulesza), tells Anna her birth name is Ida. She also reveals Anna/Ida is a Jew by birth, despite coming of age within the fold of the Catholic Church. Together, the uncomfortable duo set out to find the Holocaust-era burial place of the family they lost, revealing family secrets which reflect the guilt and volatility of their nation in the 20th century.

Shot in B&W in the boxy Academy ratio, this is a film of enormous, if reserved beauty. Characters are shrouded in atmospheric shadow. Grim landscapes, such as a dusty rural road adorned by a religious monument, are presented in elegant and evocative compositions. It is also a film which teases many ideas and tensions within its compact 80 minutes. Aunt Wanda briefly describes how she, as a judge, drew upon the rage the Second World War created within her to advance Poland's Communist government, even sentencing enemies of the people to death, earning the dubious title "Red Wanda." And on a basic level, the idea of a naive girl raised entirely within an environment as limited as a convent becoming submerged in a sea of domestic tragedy and sexual temptation is enticing and overflowing with potential provocation.

My main grievance: this is a film which often introduces a wonderful idea, but shies away from shading and exploring it. It is, to a fault, austere, cold, restrained, and resistant to conventional drama or suspense, as if to directly rip into a character or a moment would constitute an academic and artistic failure. I also believe it tends to confuse ace visual compositions with a complete, satisfying storytelling. Consider the early sequences regarding the life of Anna/Ida in the convent. There are fantastic images (she and her peers laboriously move a statue of Jesus in the snow, and they eat a modest meal alongside stern nuns), but the images come and go at such a rapid-fire clip. The experience would be enriched a great deal if the audience were allowed a richer understanding of the heroine's life in this place, including how history and politics are conveyed to her and how she interacts with the people around her. This might counteract the air of iced Turin Horse severity, but for the benefit of this perfectly styled, yet low-impact recreation of vintage Eastern European art-house cinema.

C+