Ula now takes Jacek to school. She clutches him tight before sending him on his way. He runs in with his friends joyously, but then turns back and waves to his mother before he goes. As is true with most Kieslowski children, Jacek is kind and emotionally intelligent.

We next see Ula’s dead husband Antek lingering on the school grounds, sitting on the park bench beside Ula (with her unaware.) We also hear Preisner’s score that sounds an awful lot like the symphony in “Three Colours: Blue” — and I suddenly get the feeling that this movie is a spiritual prequel to that movie, also about a lost partner and the complicated grieving process. Ula gets up to leave and a black dog wanders by — Antek starts caressing it. So apparently dogs have a connection to the dead in Kieslowski’s universe.

The dog seems like a chocolate lab, which is a bit on the nose considering what the plot brings us next.

Ula comes home and sees that Joanna (played by Maria Pakulnis, who was Ewa in Dekalog 3) is sitting on the steps waiting for her with her young daughter. They have helped themselves to some of Ula’s milk (funny, considering all of the plot points that involve milk for Grazyna Szapolowska’s Madga in Dekalog 6.)

This begins the very long subplot about Joanna’s husband Dariusz and his imprisonment for inciting a strike during martial law. Antek was Dariusz’s lawyer and Joanna is there to fetch the case file. Ula doesn’t want to give it to her — she rightly says it needs to be preserved for his next lawyer — but she eventually gives in and lets her look through it.

Yadda yadda yadda, more exposition, Ula eventually recommends a new lawyer for Joanna — Antek’s mentor, a man named … wait for it … Labrador! Ok. I usually like the way Kieslowski plays with matters of coincidence and fate, but this plot point is cringe.

Joanna goes to meet with Labrador … he gives us the standard movie reluctance to take the case (I don’t take those kinds of cases anymore) but then asks for a little time to think about it. Labrador is played by the great Aleksander Bardini, who brings the same world weariness to the role that he brought to the doctor in Dekalog 2.

And so Labrador prepares to exit, runs into a colleague who tells him that the Polish government is about to impose a mandatory retirement age of 70 on all lawyers … so suddenly he has a desire to go out with a blaze of glory. He sees Joanna before she can leave the courthouse and agrees to take the case.

Ok … Sidney Lumet’s “The Verdict” it’s not. And it’s also Krzysztof Piesiewicz’s first script, so it’s understandable if the plot is a bit clunky.

But what makes “No Exit” interesting, even during it’s awkward moments, is the way it will signal Kieslowski’s cinematic obsessions that will run through The Dekalog and his major post-Cold War films.

So even when the movie is too obvious, it’s interesting to watch as a proof of concept for his later work — and proof of the mastery he achieved in a relatively short amount of time.