‘Ida’ English Movie Poster

I wasn’t able to attend Ebertfest this year due to it being during an inconvenient point in my schedule, but after looking at the movies that they were screening, I knew I wanted to see ‘Ida’. Luckily enough I saw that ‘Ida’ was on Netflix, so I put aside a night and settled in to watch the 2015 Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award winner.

‘Ida’ follows a young, orphaned girl raised as a nun who is ordered to visit her only known relative, her aunt, before she takes her vows. Among their first interactions with each other, her aunt, Wanda, tells her to try some worldly sins before taking her vows.

Wanda Gruz, Ida’s aunt

With this visit, Ida discovers her family’s past, and witnesses a life drastically different from her chaste one in Wanda. After the visit, both go back to living their lives as they were, but both seem heavily affected by their experience– Ida seems to lose interest in convent life, and Wanda eventually breaks and ends her life. In the last stretch of the film, Ida is seen donning Wanda’s clothing, tries smoking, drinking, and flirts with love; but ultimately slips away from all that and is shown walking through the countryside, presumably back to the convent.

Flirting with love.

I personally really enjoyed this movie. It was very reminiscent of the French New Wave, and reminded me of François Truffaut’s ‘400 Blows,’ with the slow moving shots, and long takes. I also found it interesting how they chose to frame a lot of their shots. In many, the characters are either off center, or shown in the bottom half or third of many shots.

Shot Framing

Shot Framing

End Shot from ‘400 Blows’