A standard trope of American adolescent sex comedies is the virginal male character who eagerly seeks out sexual situations, but once he actually attain it, he’s left clueless how to act. Such situations are commonly diffused with comedy in American films.

Kieslowski has this very strange approach to uncomfortable moments. Time and again, he sets up situations where we expect some comedy to break the tension, but it never arrives. Instead, Kieslowski forces us to sit through the discomfort. Some people interpret such scenes as black comedy, others think it’s Eastern European naturalism.

I’m not exactly sure what it is, but it is unquestionably distinctive. We left Tomek and Magda is a lovely spot in the last scene — together in her apartment, speaking openly and honestly. But now Magda decides to turn up the temperature. She begins by asking Tomek if he has ever been with a woman — a question she almost certainly knows the answer to already.

He responds no. Magda immediately follows up with a question about masturbation — does he pleasure himself while watching her. Tomek is rubbing his hands like he’s Woody Allen in one of his early films, but the wisecrack never arrives, he gives the awkward truth that at first he did, but he no longer does.

Magda caresses his face, her face towards him and away from the camera, then she asks — as if a Biblical prosecutor — you know it’s a sin. He replies yes. I don’t really get the sense that this is why Tomek is holding back. I think he’s idealized Magda to the point that she is more an object of worship than one of desire.

Now we enter the realm somewhere in between sex comedy and porn film. Magda tells Tomek not to speak. But then she starts asking him questions, starting with “you know I have nothing on underneath” and then a question about whether he knows a woman gets wet when aroused. Tomek looks like he’s still searching for the perfect Woody Allen exit line from this discomfort, which heightens the sense of sexual dysfunction.

She tells him she’s wet now. We see his fidgeting hands. She wraps her hands around them. She tells him is hands are gentle and then not to be afraid. Magda places his hands on her bare legs, which are slightly spread apart.

Without his hands to fidget with anymore, he looks even more uncomfortable. We do not know when Magda’s hands are, by the way, and from Tomek’s expressions and gasps, it’s likely they are active. After about 10 seconds, he gasps, moans and starts to cry. Magda asks if he is finished.

Magda asks him if it was good. Then she tells him — that’s all there is to love. She tells him to go to the bathroom and dry himself.

Mortified, Tomek races quickly out of her apartment. She notices him cross the courtyard outside. He slows as he approaches The Watcher, who for some reason is carrying two suitcases. They eye each other. The Watcher puts his suitcases down and observes Tomek, who continues to eye him but slowly moves toward his building.

Magda quickly rummages through a case to find a set of opera glasses. She locates Tomek’s apartment and sees him through the window, but he quickly turns off the light. She holds up the red phone, but gets no response.

Tomek is planning his response. He gets a basin out of the tub. (Trigger warning, self harm scene ahead.)

Magda takes one of her canvases and writes in big letters: come back, I’m sorry. She puts it up to the window. But Tomek is engaged in some preliminary self harm rituals that I will not describe.

What leads to Tomek’s despair? Does Magda’s attack on the nature of love hit too close to home? Is he literally dying of embarrassment? Or has the futility of his long idealization — his narrative of hope — hit a dead end and, without it, he sees no reason to live?

As the segment ends, we assume that Tomek is entering his final sleep. Comedy it is not. Kieslowski has taken something so common in American cinema that it carries cliche and expectation. He’s turned slapstick into tragedy.