Patryk comes from a village where his destitute parents scrape by selling scrap metal on a run-down farm. But he doesn’t want to become a farmer—he rents a cheap room in Warsaw, wears brightly colored secondhand clothes, and tries to make a name for himself as an artist.

One day, he stumbles upon a performance art exhibition where Maria buys visitors’ tears and displays them. She comes from a wealthy family in the big city—but during a role-playing exercise, it becomes clear that Maria, just like the tearless Patryk, is deeply burdened by trauma. In some ways, they are kindred spirits. Their relationship develops into a roller-coaster ride that becomes a trial by fire on social, erotic, emotional, and artistic levels.

Once again, Łukasz Ronduda pulls off the masterstroke of seamlessly embedding artistic questions and real works of art into a film narrative, ensuring that neither the discourse becomes too intellectual nor the art is trivialized. Having already portrayed an artist couple in “Heart of Love” (2017), he now incorporates the aspect of classism into a relationship story. In doing so, he once again draws on real-life models—Patryk’s model is the artist Patryk Różycki, and the visual artist Karolina Balcer served as the inspiration for the character of Maria. [Rainer Mende]