Skolimowski returned to directing after a nearly twenty-year absence (spent becoming an accomplished painter and also acting in such films as Cronenberg's Eastern Promises) with this compact tale of obsession, filmed in his native Poland. A shy, socially withdrawn crematorium worker falls in love with a younger woman, but is too timid to approach her; instead, he begins to sneak into her home at night, just to be near to her. Perversion and romance, brutality and beauty merge over the course of four nights, and as the pair's shared past becomes revealed. Recalling the thwarted antiheroes of Dostoevsky and of Bresson's Four Nights of a Dreamer, as well as of Kie´slowski's compact Decalogue series, Four Nights with Anna benefits from Skolimowski's training as a painter and a poet; here one frame, one moment, conveys more about obsession, love, and isolation than an entire film. “A true return,” wrote Cahiers du Cinéma, “as the film could have been made twenty years ago.”

Four Nights with Anna also plays on Friday, August 5.