When the men left for war in 1939, the women who stayed behind needed a fourth for bridge. That is how six-year-old Romain Zaleski, the future engineer, learned to play. Over time, he became a master of a game where patience, anticipation and cold calculation matter as much as in business. In A Quiet Man, Polish-French filmmaker Rafael Lewandowski profiles the financier who has always known how to play his cards.
Against the Mont Blanc massif, in a butter-yellow shirt and checked cap, stands a man whose wealth is hard to imagine and personality still harder to grasp. Zaleski is so discreet that one has to make an effort to notice him. At five, he already played the banker: while friends dreamed of Peugeot bicycles, he saved their pocket money until he decided they had enough to buy one. This anecdote illustrates the legend of a financier-philanthropist who would rank among France’s wealthiest people. Yet how does one tell the story of a man who remains discreet even when his prosperity becomes impossible to overlook? A Quiet Man suggests an answer, though not always a convincing one.
The camera follows Zaleski through a life of potential constantly discovered: in rescued companies, risky ventures and art that means more to him than capital. At times, however, detailed accounts of business deals and stock-market maneuvers overwhelm viewers unfamiliar with finance, resembling a lecture for initiates rather than a cinematic portrait.
The film comes most alive when Zaleski stops discussing money. The French coup de foudre – a sudden infatuation – aptly describes his relationship with art and explains why he buys it not as investment but luxury. Dogs once ate his first Moroccan carpet; today his collection numbers around 1,300 items, an amount that leaves even the collector astonished. Between these images lies prosperity that allowed private fascination to become an undertaking on an enormous scale.
Lewandowski captures his protagonist’s childlike delight at the sight of art, but does not always maintain the same discretion in his storytelling. The opening animations vanish almost as quickly as they appear, while accordion music gives way to a conventional parade of talking heads. The non-linear structure cuts between wartime recollections, financial triumphs and family anecdotes, but its jumps rarely generate meaning: instead of revealing new connections, they make the biography feel assembled rather than explored. Family involvement – Zaleski’s daughter Hélène co-wrote the screenplay – reinforces the sense that we are watching not an intimate portrait but a saga of a family convinced of its exceptionalism. A Quiet Man reveals a fascinating biography, yet it rarely separates the admiration for its subject from the admiration he inspires in himself.
Zaleski says art allows him to leave the ordered world of mathematics and geometry. A Quiet Man itself, however, remains firmly attached to the order of his achievements. Can it marvel at the man – or merely at the legend he has carefully built around himself?
Director: Rafael Lewandowski
Writer: Rafael Lewandowski, Hélène Zaleski
Cast: Romain Zaleski, Hélène Zaleski
Running Time: 79 minutes
Country: Poland
Year: 2026
Rating: 2
Karolina Zdunek
©FIPRESCI 2026