HI TEREKSKA!

The moniker Not Another Teen Movie could well apply to HI TERESKA!, an unforgettable portrayal of one child's innocence lost, stripped from the title character piece by heartrending piece, an captured in a digital-video blowup to a black-and-white palette that reinforces its Greek-tragedy underpinnings. The daughter of a police officer, young Tessa aspires to be a fashion designer, but her dreams meet with indifference at a home wracked by nightly domestic fights and alcoholism. Entering high school, Tessa falls under the spell of an older, savvier girl, Renata, and learns that thieving, manipulation and betrayal constitute a way of life in juvenile society. And, by degrees, she discovers how to play that game to get what she wants. Her first love is little more than a consciousless ruffian, and even a sympathetic adult, the lonely, wheelchair-bound Mr. Edek, turns out to be corrupt. Yet the filmmakers never lose your sense of sympathy for the ill-used heroine, and the remarkable actress Aleksandra Giestner turns in a vibrant performance as a girl who, on a fundamental level, realizes that she's becoming increasingly cold, bitter and cruel, yet remains powerless to do anything to halt her precipitous fall from that state of unsullied grace that is early childhood. (In Polish with English subtitles)