Delivery by Christmas (2022) Review: With December’s advent, temperatures fall, and spirits soar. The holiday cheers spill over people’s emotions, moods, and commercial discounts. Films are not unaffected either. Like any sane content producer, Netflix is bringing quite a number of Christmas-spirited films. ‘Delivery by Christmas,’ a nifty little Polish romantic comedy, is particularly crafty in its muted way of delivering joy while acknowledging the feebleness of festive’s fleeting moments. Through its deadpan comedy, the film celebrates the holidays as the ever-so-longed respite it is. A respite from the mundane world of jobs, responsibilities, and relationships. Even if that is for a little while.
Directed by Aleksandra Kulakowska and Maciej Prykowski and written by the duo along with Maria Pulawska, ‘Delivery by Christmas’ has a fine story to tell and even finer characters to etch. It all starts with Marysia (Monika Frajczyk), a single mother of a little boy named Maks. Marysia works as a delivery person in a courier service company. She tries hard to get the coveted Christmas gift for her son, an expensive model ship. However, all it takes to ruin her efforts is the drunken spite of her rebuffed supervisor, who, after being told ‘no’ on his kissing attempt on Marysia (misreading Marysia’s sympathy as flirting, like many of my genders do), changes all the labels of Marysia’s delivery of Christmas eve.
This ensures the gifts intended for one person are received by another in Marysia’s route. After being notified of the error, Marysia has no choice but to undo all that by picking up and redelivering all packages. She is joined by Krzysiek (Piotr Pacek), who was expecting his late grandma’s ring from his grandpa, delivered through Marysia. But instead got video footage in a raunchy USB drive.
Like most romantic comedies, the seed of love is planted when two supposed opposing forces are thrust together for a common goal. Marysia’s old and shabby red delivery van becomes the home for her and Krzysiek in their joint venture as they charter through the cold and festive city. On the other hand, the mix-up of gift packages has triggered a couple of well-intended activities in the lives of their unintended recipients.
For Ernest (Miroslaw Baka), the arrival of a figurine with a huge penis heralds the start of something new. Ernest’s gift came from Estera (Dorota Kolak), a middle-aged married woman whose husband has replaced his sexual zeal with a longing for traveling. Estera’s intended gift for Ernest, who is her tailor of her, was a pair of nice shoes. However, the figurine, which actually was a banter gift from our Krzysiek’s grandpa, who has never shown any interest in letting his wife’s ring go to their grandson, helps build a different relationship between Ernest and Estera. Different from a cordial one of a tailor and his customer.
A similar unanticipated turn of events occurs in Mirek’s (Lukasz Gawronski) life too. The raunchy video footage on the USB drive was supposed to be the gift for Mirek from his workmate cum girlfriend. But the cheerful news of a positive pregnancy test with the message ‘Hi Daddy!’ completely changes the dynamic for Mirek’s parents at least. They try to infuse some sense of responsibility in Mirek, who still lives with them.
As they try to undo things, things start to change between Krzysiek and Marysia. Like all of the wrong recipients of Marysia’s delivery, the positive effects of the consequences of mix-up catch with both of them too.
The film manages to cram a lot of human fallacies under the guise of an idiosyncratic festive comedy. Quite beautifully shot (Bartosz Piotrowski in cinematography) and edited in a way that perfectly complements the deadpan nature of the film (editor: Michal Poddebniak), ‘Delivery by Christmas’ has a fine ensemble cast. All the actors perfectly capture the weirdness and the eccentricity of the situations their characters find themselves in. Monika Frajczyk and Piotr Pacek are doing the matter-of-fact anchoring role at that.
To the writers’ credit, ‘Delivery by Christmas’ is subtle in its exploration of holiday cheers. There is no grand declaration of love. No dramatic change of events. No rushing to stop someone from doing something. Like Marysia and Krzysiek’s seemingly time-bound journey taking an unwise stop at the local fuel station, ‘Delivery by Christmas’ also takes pleasure in all the stops in the lackadaisical execution of its story. Kulakowska and Prykowski champions those stops. Those breaks. From the usual grind. After all, isn’t that what holidays are most about?
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