NO PRESSURE (Nic na siłę) (2024): A Middling Rom-Com With Appropriate Footwear and Goats!

Rambunctious goats aside, the trailer for No Pressure (2024) didn’t look particularly intriguing. You could say I didn’t feel particularly…pressured to watch it right away. Sorry. No. That was awful. But this movie is actually not totally awful for a comfort-watch mediocre rom-com. Sure, the plot is sometimes muddy, the runtime outstrips the amount of material and character development, there’s a child who offers the adults far too much sage life advice, there are a few too many outsized physical scuffles, and the subtitles are subpar and confusing. However! It’s a rather mellow and sweet story of a woman finding her way back to her family and herself—with the help of a Genetically Blessed man, obviously—in the bucolic Polish countryside, surrounded by, yes, goats, and a cast of colorful, slightly corny, but ultimately endearing characters. Plus, she wears proper footwear for every occasion! And goats. Did I mention the goats?

Oliwia (Anna Szymanczyk) is living out her dream, working as a chef in the city. Her demanding boss doesn’t seem to appreciate anyone else’s culinary creations the way he does hers, which makes her beam with pride. It’s implied that she’s worked hard to get to this point, and she’s not giving it up for anything or anyone. But then comes a fateful phone call, right in the middle of her work day, which changes everything. The man on the phone says that Halina (Anna Seniuk), Oliwia’s estranged grandmother, has died, and Oliwia takes two-days leave to visit her ancestral village and attend the funeral. Oliwia is blunt in her speech, rigorous in her work, and quick to anger in everything. As she’s leaving town, she nearly runs over a man delivering packages, smashing one of his boxes under the wheels of her car in the process. Later, on the dirt road to her grandmother’s village, there’s a lone man setting up to do roadwork. Just as he’s turning to put a large metal sign in place, she drives right into him, causing the sign to conk him on the head, push him over backwards, and cover his body completely. Thinking that she’s killed him, Oliwia frantically reaches for her phone, trying to call an ambulance. But then the man moves, begins groaning, and pushes the sign off of himself. Oliwia’s jaw drops and she nearly growls, “You! Do you know how long it took me to get here from Wrocław?” Still without speaking, the man shakily stands, rubs his forehead in pain, and, taking her in, grins at her. At which point Oliwia screams, “Be careful. You almost killed me.” Yeah. So not the greatest start for her character, but they’re trying to make a point about her stubbornness, impatience, and inability to see anyone’s perspective but her own. Then he very calmly asks, “I almost did?” As in, I almost killed you? And that, of course, only angers her more. Did I mention this guy is also ruggedly handsome? A stark, but pleasing contrast to her urban funeral attire of spaghetti strap black mini dress and the comfortable sneakers she’s thrown on for the drive. He asks her if “big city folk know how to say ‘I’m sorry,'” so if you didn’t know he was the love interest before, you sure as shit do now.

He continues to calmly (maddeningly so if you Oliwia) go about his work, setting up traffic cones to block the road, while she yells at him about jumping in front of her car. Then he sits down for his lunch break. Too proud and irate to apologize or ask for his help, Oliwia turns her car around to find an alternate route into town. This leads her through a field and ultimately into a deep, muddy rut where her car bottoms out and she’s forced to walk the rest of the way. Good thing she brought comfortable shoes! In all her huffing and detouring she doesn’t spot some older man squatting in the field like he’s cosplaying David Rose, reporting her arrival via cellphone to someone. Intrigue! But not really!

At the church, Oliwia leans over her grandmother’s open casket and says there are so many things left unsaid and she’s so sorry she wasn’t there for her. With her head resting on the pillow of the casket, surrounded by brightly-colored flowers and the voices of her friends singing in the background, the grandmother smiles and says, “Do I really have to die in order to hear that from you?” Oliwia screams and runs outside, which is really the ONLY response to finding out that your estranged grandmother, her besties (Magdalena Smalara and Paulina Holtz), and her preacher man Jan (Artur Barcis) faked her death to check your level of devotion and to see if you’ll be down to eventually take over the family land and goat cheese farm. I mean, it’s a LOT. And it’s only the beginning. It’s a lot as a viewer, too, so I wouldn’t judge if you are ready to bail at this point, but it plays better on screen than you might expect. Or better than I expected. There’s a tenderness between the hijinks that somehow grounds it.

Planning to head directly back to the bosom of the city, Oliwia stalks back to her car, but it won’t start, and when she tries to fix it she manages to pull out a handful of cables. Just then, her grandmother rumbles up on her tractor and, after a short argument, she tows Oliwia and car back to her house. There, while feeding the milking goats, Halina explains that she’s in debt to some herbal tycoon who even took her to court and she’s been banned from making her goat cheese by the health department. She begs Oliwia to help her, but since Oliwia still believes her grandmother abandoned her years ago, she refuses.

The next morning Oliwia is woken up to Dumpling, her childhood horse, nuzzling her through an open window, to goats eating her luggage, and to a note from her grandmother saying she’s left and it’s up to Oliwia to keep things running or to sell the place. If she needs help, says the note, she can find Wojtek, who works on the farm sometimes. What choice does Oliwia have but to go look for this guy? And you’re never going to believe who she finds! The guy from the road, who somehow does not have a giant bruise on his forehead or signs of a concussion! Together they go back to the farm, where they arrive just in time to help with the miracle of goat birth. Such a beautiful bonding experience! I swear, the way rom-coms play up emergency human intervention in animal births as a romantic interlude, you’d think it wasn’t a messy, often terrifying experience that can take hours of sleepless nights to play out. However, if goat yoga sells so well, someone should absolutely capitalize on goat birth ceremonies. Goat rebirthing? You and your loved one can share in the beauty and wonder of holding a “just-born kid” before handing it off to its waiting mother. Bond over the magic experience of witnessing a “near birth-like experience” close-up without actually having to do any real work. “Amniotic fluid” extra.

Anyhoodle, it turns out that Wojtek isn’t really Wojtek, but Kuba (Mateusz Janicki), the herbal “tycoon” whom Halina hates, and best friend of the real Wojtek (Filip Gurlacz), who has been off in the city trying for fame (or something) on a singing competition show. It’s just, you know how these things go, Oliwia thought he was Wojtek and he was going to correct her, but then he didn’t and now it’s too late and he really, really likes her so he can’t now. Oops.

Lying to the one you want to love is a great way to start a relationship. Koba probably isn’t really a bad guy because he’s also a single dad to his daughter Tola (Zuzanna Wieleba) , who is incredibly wise for her young years. Single dads can’t be bad dads in movies like these. He’s not a widow, but he’s got a situation that makes him almost as good of a guy in the world of rom-coms. Tola doesn’t seem to have many friends her age, aside from a pony, but she’s got ample time to give sage advice to all the wayward and lovelorn adults in her life. Look, I’ve said this many times before, but I’m so over this misuse of children. I know it’s cute when “kids say the darndest things” and that we like to think of children as precocious little adults. And I know it’s all meant as a humorous plot device here, but it still troubles me because of how it reinforces an idea that it’s cute when children give adults advice that appears wise beyond their years, when really it’s just a sign that we’re asking far too much of them emotionally. 

Meanwhile, Oliwia reconnects with an old friend Matylda (Angelika Cegielska-Swiatek), starts to see the beauty of farm life, gets chased by a goose, gets her car fixed, saves the baby goat (again), has a moment with non-Wojtek, and gets her car un-fixed by non-Wojtek because he really wants her to stay. Is that a huge red flag? Absolutely. In the real world that’s a red flag visible from the farthest reaches of the galaxy. But here it’s considered a romantic gesture of sorts and one that’s supported by the whole community when absolutely no one will help her out with finding a mechanic. Her grandmother, who everyone adores, even the herbal tycoon, is hiding out at Jan’s house—who’s had a lifetime of hots for her—but she’s still keeping in touch with everyone and sending out messages, so no one would dare do anything that interfered with Oliwia having the chance to learn to love her matrilineal land. Huh. Yeah. It’s all pretty problematic-sounding on paper like that, but with the music and pretty landscape and all the farm animals it’s also kinda not? The goats really help. Though, are they a scam? Because I spent a lot of time trying to see udders on these milking goats and came up with bupkis. No! I looked more and there are udders, so that’s my mistake, but they don’t appear to be udders that are full for milking, which is kind of fair to the goats if you think about it.

Since Oliwia is stuck in this Bodźki for the foreseeable future, she figures out how to milk the probably not udderless goats in the most inefficient way possible, gives some life-changing advice to a couple of guys (Pawel Koslik and Piotr Rogucki) making moonshine, and starts to try to save her grandmother’s farm. She’ll learn a lot about herself, her family history, the community, and her heart in the process, and she’ll end up changing the people around her for the better.

Of course, there will be several misunderstandings, some subterfuge, too many physical tussles for my taste, and the expected amount of falling in love in the process. Oliwia and Kuba (formerly known as Wojtek) have a sweet kind of chemistry. Her character is generally much tougher and less emotionally available (a switcheroo on the usual dynamic), so it’s much clearer from the start how smitten he is with her than she is with him. They never exactly burn for each other, but this isn’t that kind of movie anyway. The storyline between Oliwia and her grandmother starts off strong and interesting, but then kind of fizzles because they’re separated for so much of the movie. I do wish we had seen more of them having their own rekindling of a familiar love story together. But can we talk about my love story with Oliwia’s footwear? I swoon. She wears high heels once and only once to the funeral, which makes sense and is appropriate. And when she’s angrily pacing outside, she yanks them off her feet to walk barefoot, which also makes sense and is appropriate. Throughout the rest of the movie she wears what look like pull-on work boots or sneakers. Shoewear suitable to her location and vocation. Shoes that match her confident, capable personality and that never leave her stranded or needing someone’s assistance simply because she’s poorly shod. Oh, it’s a small thing, unless you watch a lot of rom-coms, and then it’s a pivotal thing on which so many things hinge. (Please note: this is in no way disparaging high heels, which have their absolute time and place.)

I had a few questions about the end not so much because of this exact ending, but because of the romanticized trope that it represents and the way it uses the idea of regret as a one-way kind of street…and also because of the way it elides how much fucking work goat farming would really be. But that’s probably inserting way too much reality into my watching. As they say, just sit back and enjoy the goats. No one says that. But they should.

Overall Rating on the Chronically Streaming Pain Scale: