There's a famed scene in Zulawski's Possession where Isabelle Adjani emotionally falls apart in an empty subway corridor. Here those histrionic spasms, including by Zulawski's then wife who inspired Adjani's character, are pervasive.
I wish I knew more Polish history, other than the lines on the map representing the partitions of 1772, 1793 (this film's setting), and 1795. My intuition is this film was intended as an attack on the feckless and dissolute nobility, whose infighting ended the Polish state for 125 years. And perhaps by extension the Polish Communist Party, subservient to Russia at the time.
