A Short Film About Love

Like A Short Film About Killing, this is a movie spin-off from Kieslowski's ten-part TV series The Decalogue, each segment of which sardonically re-examines one of the Ten Commandments. It's about a 19-year-old postal clerk who covets the slightly older woman in the flat opposite, to the extent that he keeps his astronomical telescope fixed on her windows and spends his every free minute glued to its sys-piece. Without fathoming the depths of his passion, the woman learns of his obsession and starts responding to his surveillance - with potentially disastrous results. Well aware that Hitchcock and Michael Powell have been down these streets before him, Kieslowski turns in an absolutely masterly movie that yields equal parts of humour and wry emotional truth. As an account of love in the late 20th century, it's in a league of its own. See also Dekalog 6: 'Thou shalt not commit adultery'.