Four Nights with Anna 2008

In a small town in Poland, Leon, an inarticulate man, lives with his bedridden grandmother in a log cabin beside the hospital. While out fishing, he stumbles upon a rape, and the assailant flees. The victim, a nurse at the hospital named Anna, lets him be arrested and jailed. On release, he takes a job in the hospital crematorium and soon discovers that the window of Anna’s room is within view of his cabin, prompting him to watch her in the evenings.

One night he breaks in and mixes some of his grandmother’s sleeping tablets ground into the sugar that she puts into her tea each night. Once she is sound asleep, he starts visiting her room, not exposing her or touching her, except once to paint a toenail, but content just to be in her presence among her things and to do small tasks like sewing on a missing button.

Budget constraints mean that the hospital has to close its crematorium and he is laid off with a severance payment. He uses it to buy an engagement ring, which he leaves for her one night. Climbing out of her window in a hurry, he stumbles on a police car and, as he is a known rapist, they take him in. At his trial, when the judge asks why he did it, he says > “Love”.

Anna allows him to be jailed but then visits him there: she says she has known all along that he is innocent and gives him back the ring.