MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Misplaced’ Critiques Promised Land

Elzbieta Czyzewska, the Polish film and stage star who provided the inspiration for Oscar-nominated Sally Kirkland’s title role in “Anna” a few years back, has a leading role herself in Louis Yansen’s “Misplaced” (Monica 4-Plex), a warm and incisive independent production of modest budget and impressive impact.

Czyzewska and John Cameron Mitchell--his Polish accent is as flawless as Kirkland’s Czech accent was in “Anna”--play mother and son, Halina and Jacek Nowak, who depart an increasingly ominous Warsaw in 1981 for a Washington suburb, where Czyzewska’s mother (Viveca Lindfors) and half-sister (Deirdre O’Connell) and her husband, David (John Christopher Jones), live.

The emigrant struggle to build a new life in an alien land is familiar enough, but the observations of Yansen, for whom the film is semi-autobiographical, and co-writer Thomas DeWolfe are especially revealing, giving us a picture of contemporary America through the eyes of newcomers that doesn’t pull punches.

The kids at Jacek’s school are spoiled, self-absorbed and thoughtlessly cruel. The women at Voice of America, where Halina lands a job as a cleaning woman, are condescending and self-important. Both mother and son face a very nearly overwhelming challenge in winning acceptance and opportunities worthy of them.

Complicating matters is that Jacek, a promising 17-year-old violinist, is coming of age just as his mother, who left her marriage behind in Poland, is drifting into an affair with an affable blue-collar man (Drew Snyder) from Arkansas, to the youth’s disapproval.

“Misplaced,” which marks Yansen’s feature debut, is longer on substance than style. That’s scarcely a sin, however, considering how many pictures are all style and no content. What’s more, its characters are exceptionally well-drawn and beautifully played. Czyzewska conveys the underlying weariness and near despair of the persistent Halina, and Mitchell’s Jacek, the film’s primary figure, is achingly proud and vulnerable. Lindfors’ fiery grandmother has an innate beauty and elegance that time and decades of working as a charwoman cannot dim. Kellie Overbey is lovely as a high-school girl who proves to be not so shallow as she first seems.

“Misplaced” comes alive in its telling details. Jacek, for example, is outfitted at the local mall for his first day at school by the well-meaning David only to have his clothes put down with a single phrase: “K mart.”

‘MISPLACED’

An Original Cinema release of a Subway Films production. Producer Lisa Zwerling. Director Louis Yansen. Screenplay Yansen, Thomas DeWolfe. Consulting producer DeWolfe. Associate producer Ron Ellis. Camera Igor Sunara. Music Michael Urbaniak. Production designer Beth Kuhn. Costumes Linda-Lee Cocuzzo. Film editor Michael Berenbaum. With John Cameron Mitchell, Viveca Lindfors, Elzbieta Czyzewska, Drew Snyder, Deirdre O’Connell, John Christopher Jones, Debralee Scott, Tico Wells, Scott Tiler, Kellie Overbey, Talia Paul, Irving Metzman.

Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

Times-rated: Mature (complex subject matter).