Aside from a few hyper goats, the No Pressure (2024) trailer wasn’t all that interesting. I wasn’t exactly compelled to watch it right away, you could say. Sorry No. That was terrible. But this movie is actually not completely terrible for a comfort watch mediocre rom com. The plot is muddy sometimes and the runtime outstrips the material and character development by a good mile or two, there’s a child who gives adults way too much sage life advice, there are more than enough outsized physical scuffles, and the subtitles are subpar and confusing. However! It’s a nice little 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 some colorful, slightly corny but ultimately endearing characters. Plus she wears appropriate footwear for every occasion! Also goats. Did I mention goats?
Oliwia (Anna Szymanczyk) is living her dream as a chef in the city. Her boss works hard not appreciating anyone else’s culinary creations as much as he does hers and it makes her glow with pride. She’s clearly worked very hard to get here and she’s not giving it up for anything or anyone at least that’s what she thinks until that phone call comes in right in the middle of her work day and changes everything forever some guy calling from Wielkopolska saying Halina (Anna Seniuk), Oliwia’s estranged grandmother, has died, so Oliwia takes two days leave to visit her ancestral village & attend funeral etc. Oliwia speaks bluntly, works hard rigorously & gets angry quickly at everything always. On her way out of town she nearly runs over a man delivering packages, smashing one of his boxes under the wheels of her car as she does. Then 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; sign conks him on the head, pushes him over backwards and covers his body completely.
Thinking that she has killed him, Oliwia frantically reaches for her phone & tries calling an ambulance but then the man moves and starts groaning and pushes the sign off himself and Oliwia’s jaw drops and she nearly growls “You! Do you know how long it took me to get here from Wrocław?” The man still doesn’t speak, but stands shakily rubbing his forehead in pain for a moment, before grinning at her. To which Oliwia screams back: “Careful. You almost killed me.” Yeah. Not the best start for our character but they’re trying to make a point about her stubbornness, impatience, inability to see other people’s perspectives etc. Then he asks very calmly. “I almost did?” As in I almost killed you? And that only makes her angrier of course. Did I mention this guy is also ruggedly handsome? A stark contrast with her spaghetti strap black mini dress of urban funeral attire & comfortable sneakers thrown on for drive down there. He asks if big city folk know how to say ‘I’m sorry, so if you didn’t know he was love interest before now sure as shit do.
He keeps going calmly (infuriatingly so, according to Oliwia) about his work, putting traffic cones up to block the road as she yells at him for stepping in front of her car. Then he takes his lunch break. Too proud and angry to apologize or ask for help from him, Oliwia turns her car around to find a different way into town. This route takes her through a field and eventually into a deep, muddy rut where her car gets stuck and she has to walk the rest of the way. Luckily she wore comfortable shoes! In all her panting and backtracking she doesn’t see some old man crouched 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 on the pillow of the casket, surrounded by bright flowers and the sound of 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 upon learning that your estranged grandmother, her besties (Magdalena Smalara and Paulina Holtz), along with preacher man Jan (Artur Barcis), have faked your death as some sort of test of loyalty to see if you’d be down for eventually taking over family land goat cheese farm like it’s A LOT. And that’s just beginning. It is also a lot as a viewer, so I wouldn’t judge if you’re ready to bail at this point but it plays better on screen than you might think or better than I thought anyway there’s a tenderness between these hijinks that somehow grounds it.
Planning to go straight back into the bosom of the city, Oliwia stomps back to her car, but it won’t start, and when she tries to fix it she manages to pull out a handful of wires. Just then, her grandmother rumbles up on her tractor and, after a brief argument, ends up towing Oliwia and car back to her house. There, while feeding milking goats, Halina explains that she’s been sued by some herbal tycoon who even took her to court and is now under an injunction from the health department against making goat cheese. She implores Oliwia to help her but since Oliwia still believes that her grandmother abandoned her years ago she refuses.
The next day, Dumpling, her favorite horse from childhood, woke Oliwia by sticking its head through the open window and nuzzling her face, goats were eating her bags, and there was a note from her grandma saying she’d gone and it was up to Oliwia to keep things running or sell the place but Wojtek might be around if she needed help. So of course she has to go look for this guy.
And you’ll never guess who it turns out he is! The hitchhiker! Who somehow doesn’t have a giant bruise on his forehead or any sign of a concussion! They go back to the farm together. They get there just in time for the miracle of goat birth. It’s such a bonding experience! You know, rom coms really play up emergency human intervention in animal births as being romantic when actually it’s mostly terrifying and gross and can take hours of sleepless nights to play out although if goat yoga sells so well someone should definitely capitalize on goat birth ceremonies. Rebirthing? You and your loved one 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 having to do any real work yourselves. “Amniotic fluid” optional.
But anyway, so then what happens is that (surprise!) Wojtek isn’t really Wojtek at all his name is Kuba (Mateusz Janicki), he’s an herbal tycoon whom Halina hates, and he’s best friends with the real Wojtek (Filip Gurlacz), who went off to the big city chasing fame (or something) on some singing competition tv show. It’s just that, you know how these things are Oliwia thought he was Wojtek and he was gonna correct her, but then he didn’t and now it’s too late and he really, really likes her so he can’t. Oops.
Deceiving the person you want to love is an excellent method of starting a relationship with them. Koba isn’t really that bad of a guy because he’s also a single dad to his daughter Tola (Zuzanna Wieleba), who is very smart for her age. Single dads can’t be bad dads in movies like this. He’s not a widow but he’s got some 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 own age, other than a pony, but she has plenty of 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 bothers me because it reinforces this idea that it’s cute when children give adults advice that seems 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 appreciate farm life, gets chased by a goose, gets her car fixed, saves the baby goat (again), has a moment with non-Wojtek, gets her car un-fixed by non Wojtek ’cause he wants her to stay Is that a huge red flag? Absolutely. In the real world that’s visible from the farthest reaches of the galaxy. But here it’s considered kind of romantic gesture and one supported by whole community when absolutely no one will help her out with finding mechanic, Her grandmother who everyone loves even 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 chance to learn 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 goats if you think about it.
So since Oliwia is stuck in this Bodźki for the foreseeable future, she figures out how to milk the probably not udderless goats in most efficient way possible, gives some life-changing advice to couple guys (Pawel Koslik and Piotr Rogucki) making moonshine, starts trying save her grandmother’s farm, She’ll learn lot about herself, her family history, community, heart etc, And she’ll end up changing everybody around her for better.
Obviously there will be plenty of miscommunication, some lying, too many fights but that’s just what you should expect when falling in love. Oliwia and Kuba (né Wojtek) have the kind of chemistry that makes you say “aww.” Her character is generally much harder and more emotionally unavailable (a flip on the usual dynamic), so it’s immediately apparent how head over heels he is for her compared to how she feels about him. They don’t exactly burn for each other, but this isn’t that kind of movie. The story between Oliwia and her grandmother starts off strong and intriguing, then peters out because they’re apart for so much of the film. I wish we’d seen more of them rekindling their own familiar love story together. But can I talk about my love story with Oliwia’s footwear? I swoon. She wears high heels once once! to the funeral, which is appropriate. And when she’s pacing outside angrily, she takes them off her feet to walk barefoot, which is also appropriate. For the rest of the movie, she appears to be wearing pull-on work boots or sneakers. shoes that match her confident, capable character; shoes that won’t leave her stranded or needing someone’s help just because they’re ill-suited for where she happens to be standing at any given moment; shoes after my own heart! It’s a small thing unless you watch heaps of rom coms, in which case it’s everything.
I had a couple questions about the ending not so much as this specific ending but as a romanticized trope it represents and uses regret as a one-way street and also how fucking labor-intensive goat farming would really be but maybe I’m inserting too much reality into my watching. As they say, Just sit back and enjoy the goats. No one says that. They should say that.
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