Marta is the middle aged wife of a doctor in a small town. She has lost both her sons in the war and leads a monotonous life. Unknown to her she is also dying of lung cancer. One day she meets a lad who could be her son's age and feels physically attracted to him. But their riverside rendezvous ends in terrible tragedy.

Now the director Andrzej Wajda complicates this simple story by weaving in another dimension. The actress playing Marta was reluctant to work in the film because of her husband's chemotherapy. While the film's tragic sequence is being shot underwater, she receives the death of her husband. It is an interesting idea but fails to deliver the dramatic impact since most of the second story is related in a long monologue by the actress. Wajda actually ends up ruining the first story too by one disastrous act of cutting between film and reality.

A huge disappointment from the Polish master.

I am a great fan of Andrzej Wajda ever since I screened Knife in the Water for my film society members and have repeatedly viewed it. He is master in opening up his film in a slow pensive way so that when it ends, it hits you hard. Sweet Rush of course starts in room in solitude lighted by a window in a Edward Hopper fashion. The scenes swing between under lighted home and clinic of the doctor husband to the brightly, quietly, peacefully pastoral countryside where the tragedy ends the serenity of Riverside. Story swings from Death to Life and back again. Suddenly at the river, you see the sequence which once looked to be part of the story being filmed. I am not sure about the concept of film within film tried here. In real life Wajda's cinematographer Edward Klosinski was Krystyna's real husband as in the film. Krystyna Janda as Marta is superb.

The bleak dark room where Krystyna Janda recalls the illness and death of her husband is the root of the sweet rush lurking in the dark, muddy bed of the river - the reality. The contrasting nectar of life given so well and poignantly through the beautiful imagery, the light, the lush nature, the music, and the wonderfully naive scenes of Bogus and Maria, you can't help loving this film above its flaws. It feels like the Krystyna Janda real life scenes were made for the actress rather than for the audience. And though heart breaking it is, these monologues are a bit too long and too raw and end up like a dull paraphrasing of a poem. Probably this is intended, but still, I would rather see that time used for more on the characters, on the story and its questions.