As a representative of the new nation, the group now should have a repertoire that addresses, he explains, “land reform, world peace and threats to it,” an edict that pushes art into the service of propaganda. A blandly villainous emissary from the government descends, forcing the ensemble to adapt Soviet-style socialist realism. It suggests a fresh start for the students, for the country, and generates a palpable if cautious optimism.

A banner reading “We Welcome Tomorrow” is strung across the school entrance, and the students - under Irena’s hawkish gaze, with Wiktor at the piano - are transformed into culture workers for the Polish People’s Republic. As she and Wiktor trade looks and steam up the screen, the ensemble comes into shape: Costumes are sewn and dances rehearsed in crisply edited, unfussy scenes. The movie settles into its groove when Wiktor takes up with Zula (a terrifically vivid Joanna Kulig), a singer with a dramatic voice, pillowy lips and visceral ambition fueled by desperation. “No more will the talents of the people go to waste - hurrah!” he announces, earning a weak cheer. (The ensemble is based on a real Polish group, Mazowsze.) It’s at this villa that young dancers, singers and musicians are to dedicate themselves to the nation’s patrimony (“music, born in the fields”) in what Kaczmarek describes as “the fierce and noble struggle.” As Wiktor and Irena silently watch, conveying much through expressive silence, Kaczmarek tries to stir up the quiet crowd of applicants. That official emissary is Kaczmarek (Borys Szyc), who with Wiktor and Irena facilitates the creation of a folk dance and music ensemble, Mazurek, housed in a dilapidated country villa.

(Their work brings to mind that of the American musicologist Alan Lomax, who made field recordings of folk musicians.) The writer-director Pawel Pawlikowski doesn’t tend to overshare, but the government toady riding with Wiktor and Irena telegraphs that the recordings have a less than innocent purpose. He and an attractively no-nonsense colleague, Irena (Agata Kulesza), record villagers whose plaintive, haunting music is a vestige of the rapidly receding past. It opens in Poland in 1949 with Wiktor (Tomasz Kot, a genius of slow-burning longing), a musician, touring the countryside gathering folk music. The movie runs just 89 minutes, during which swaths of the 20th century flutter by like a flipbook.

It has just enough politics to give it heft, striking black-and-white images and an in-the-mood-for-love ambiguity that suggests great mysteries are in store for those who watch and wait. Like its two sexy leads - who fall for each other and keep on falling - the movie has been built for maximum seduction. “Cold War” is one of those love-among-the-ruins romances that turn suffering into high style.

Zula steam