my wonderful life movie review

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘My Wonderful Life’ On Netflix, A Polish Portrait of a Middle-Aged Woman on the Verge

Where to stream:.

• My Wonderful Life (2022)
• Stream It Or Skip It

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In Polish drama My Wonderful Life , now streaming on Netflix, a woman named Joanna pulls duty as a wife, daughter, mother, grandmother, teacher, and homemaker, and begins to crumble under the pressure of her everyday life. As the secrets she’s tried to keep from her family and community threaten to come out, Joanna is backed into a corner, forced to evaluate the life she’s helped create and is now trapped by. 

MY WONDERFUL LIFE : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Joanna (Agata Buzek) is doing her best to keep it together. She lives with her husband Witek (Jacek Braciak), mother (Malgorzata Zajaczkowska), eldest son Adam (Jakub Zajac), his wife Karina (Wiktoria Wolanska), and their toddler son, and Joanna’s teen son Jan (Pawel Kruszelnicki). When she’s not running the household, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, tending to her ailing mother, or watching after her grandson, she’s also an English teacher at the local high school, where Witek also serves as headmaster. She’s compassionate with her students, showing them grace even when the rest of the educators don’t. Between everything she’s dealing with and some health issues, Joanna seems suffocated, but finds refuge in smoking weed and having an affair with one of her colleagues, Maciek (Adam Woronowicz).

When Joanna starts receiving mysterious, threatening letters and phone calls, however, she realizes that her one outlet may not stay a secret for very long. She continues to try to keep her family afloat, but the stress of her double live being exposed weighs on her. As her job, family, and reputation are all put at risk, Joanna’s already fragile mental health threatens to crack under the weight of it all – and she’s not the only one harboring a few secrets.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: My Wonderful Life might bring to mind flicks like Who You Think I Am ,  The Worst Person in the World , Let the Sunshine In , and even  The Lost Daughter at times.

Performance Worth Watching: This movie belongs to Agata Buzek, who plays Jo in all her woman-on-the-verge glory as if it’s been taken from her own life. It’s a difficult thing to pull off playing someone so easy to dislike and still have her carry a film, but Jo is a deeply interesting protagonist thanks to the multitude of things we see flash across Buzek’s face in any given scene. With a better script, this might be the kind of performance that made it overseas and into an awards conversation, but unfortunately, the writing doesn’t do the performers justice in  My Wonderful Life .

Memorable Dialogue: Nothing particularly memorable here.

Sex and Skin: Jo has her fair share of sex; with her lover, with her husband, clothed, unclothed, wearing a sash.

Our Take:  My Wonderful Life  is a bummer. There’s definitely something powerful about a story that highlights the way women play multiple thankless roles, and to  My Wonderful Life ‘s credit, it does capture this quite well. What lies beneath the facade of a perfect family, and what does it mean when it all comes crashing down? These are the questions that  My Wonderful Life  seems to want to explore, but it gets caught up in overlong, unnecessary exchanges, and unexplored storylines that seem as though they might go somewhere and then wind up forgotten or neglected. It feels like  My Wonderful Life wants us to be shocked by certain twists and turns, but in doing so, ignores the tone of the film as a whole, which is more about the madness of mundanity and the way life weighs heavily on many matriarchs. In the hands of a better writer , My Wonderful Life  might have offered a thoughtful examination of a woman on the verge and what this actually does to a family, but unfortunately, none of the threads ever come together, and we’re left with a half-baked drama that doesn’t do any of its characters justice.

Our Call:  SKIP IT. While the performances are powerful,  My Wonderful Life  never quite comes together, leaving us with what feels like a bit of a slog.

Will you stream or skip the Polish drama #MyWonderfulLife on @netflix ? #SIOSI — Decider (@decider) March 23, 2022

Jade Budowski is a freelance writer with a knack for ruining punchlines, hogging the mic at karaoke, and thirst-tweeting. Follow her on Twitter: @jadebudowski .

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‘My Wonderful Life’ Ending, Explained: Who Was Blackmailing Jo?

Joanna “Jo” Lisiecka is not just a loving mother, a caring daughter, or a dedicated wife, but a super-woman who balances between these different roles and looks after her entire joint family. She cooks food for them, brings groceries from the store, and lifts their spirits in times of need. Jo is an English teacher too, who supports her students the same way she supports her family. In short, Jo is there for everybody, but the important question is, who is there for Jo? The title of the film, “My Wonderful Life,” is ironic in itself, because Jo’s life is not wonderful at all. She is struggling and slowly draining out while trying to maintain a secret life to have chunks of happiness amidst all the chaos.

But director Lukasz Grzegorzek brings the real conflict in Jo’s life when an unknown caller blackmails Jo, to expose her secret affair to her family or maybe to the entire city. The narrative puts Jo in a situation from which she cannot run away any further and is forced to face the truth. What will become of Jo in the end? Will she be able to run away from all the relationships that are weighing her down? Will Jo finally submit to the threats and reveal her true self to the world? And most importantly, will Jo be able to be happy again?

Plot Summary

Joanna “Jo” Lisiecka (Agata Buzek) lives in a small house in Nysa with her husband, Witek, and their two sons, Adam (the elder one) and Janek (the younger one), Adam’s wife Karina, Adam’s newborn Leon, and Jo’s mother, who is an Alzheimer’s patient. Jo and Witek work in the same school where Witek is headmaster and Jo is an English teacher. Their son, Adam, is 23 years old and doesn’t do anything important except look after his newborn, at which he fails miserably, while Janek is a high school student who studies in Jo’s class.

Jo pretends to be happy with her married life, but she is not. She keeps her mother’s house for herself, which acts as an escape from all her responsibilities of being a mother, daughter, or wife. In this apartment, Jo not only conducts private tuition but also entertains an affair with a fellow science teacher, Maciek. This little secret affair with Maciek is the only life thing in her life that makes her feel liberated. But suddenly, her happiness is threatened too.

During an English class, Jo receives a text message from an unknown sender who blackmails her into exposing her secrets to the world. Initially, she believes that maybe one of her students is playing a prank on her, but suddenly the intensity of the threats increases, which makes Jo believe that someone is really after her. Hence, while struggling to manage her family life, Jo conducts an investigation of her own and involves her son, Adam, while also revealing to him her extramarital affair. Neither Adam nor Jo are able to find out the identity of the blackmailer, but that’s not what the film majorly focuses on. The threats arise only to make Jo realize that she is not happy in her married life and that she really needs to take action against it or someone else will. But who?

‘My Wonderful Life’ Ending Explained

Jo finally understood the gravity of the threats when she found an envelope in her car that was filled with intimate pictures that were clicked by Maciek during the passionate romance in Jo’s mother’s apartment. These pictures and videos were recorded from Jo’s cell phone, and probably someone hacked into it. For a moment, Jo believed that Maciek might have stolen them to expose her, but her doubts were cleared when Maciek expressed his true feelings to Jo and told her that he loved her from the bottom of his heart and would never do anything to hurt her.

The second suspect was Maciek’s daughter, Zabnicka “Monkey,” who was a mephedrone addict and probably hated Jo because maybe she knew about Jo’s affair with her father. With the help of Adam, Jo got Monkey’s fingerprints and got them tested with the fingerprints on the envelope, but they didn’t match. While Jo served fruit punch to her students during the private tuition to get Monkey’s finger, her own son, Janek, didn’t even touch the glass, and there was a reason why.

It was Janek, who hacked his mother’s cell phone or stole clips from it to blackmail her for her own good. His involvement was hinted at, by an absurd montage at the end of “My Wonderful Life,” in which Janek held a similar-looking envelope that the blackmailer had sent to Jo. However, the question here is, why did Janek blackmail his own mother and expose her secret affair to the family?

Janek knew that her mother was not happy in her marriage and that their relationship had met a dead end. It was a total wreck, but still, Jo was carrying the weight of it because of her family. Jo kept her mother’s apartment and carried out her secret affair in it, which is why she didn’t give the apartment to Adam and his wife, who eagerly wanted to move into it. Janek, as a third person, could see his mother struggling to juggle between  her real and hidden life. She wanted to help her finally face reality and stop running away from it.

In the last threat, the blackmailer blackmailed Jo to show her intimate video to her family or else he would expose it to the entire city. It was evident from the warning that the blackmailer, or Janek, wanted Jo to reveal the truth to Witek and finally break off all the ties that had been holding her back from living a happy life of her own.

Symbolically, Jo had become a hard rock, which was neither moving nor had any feelings left. She had become dry both emotionally and physically and had developed latent tetany, a calcium deficiency. If Jo had kept living a loveless life like that, then she probably would have died or developed a chronic illness in her life and thus urgently needed help. But as Janek commented, Jo was self-righteous and stubborn and wouldn’t have dared to take the grave step until and unless pushed by an external force or threat.

After Jo’s secret life and her affair with Maciek were exposed to her family, Jo courageously accepted it instead of feeling sorry for her actions. And soon after, Jo left the house and started living in her mother’s apartment, and she resigned from the school to probably start a new life somewhere else. Witek also had CCTV footage of Jo in which she broke into the school during her pursuit to catch the blackmailer, and all the teachers knew about her addiction to pot, which could be the reason too for Jo to resign.

Though Jo made all these brave decisions by the end of “My Wonderful Life,” the past knocked on her door again, and her family arrived at her mother’s apartment, probably to comfort Jo or maybe to bid a final goodbye. Even Janek planted doubts in her mother’s mind about her ability to “un-resign.” Hence, the end begs the question, Will Jo move back to her tormented life in her joint family or finally take a flight? Though her final decision was not brought to light, the closing shot symbolically gave Jo two choices in the form of two men standing in front of her: Witek and Maciek.

The way Jo smiled at Maciek suggests that she would choose him because she felt burning desire, passion, and love in their relationship, which was apparently missing with Witek. Her intimate life with Witek had died a long time ago, and Witek didn’t adore Jo as much as Maciek did. Maybe she won’t choose both of them and will lead a single life on her own terms until she feels the need to have a partner again. Director Lukasz Grzegorzek leaves us with an open ending to fill the gaps in Jo’s life and weave a conclusion that they wish to see in their own lives. Liberation or Obligation, the end depends on the audience’s perception.

“My Wonderful Life” is a 2022 Romance Thriller film written and directed by Lukasz Grzegorzek.

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My Wonderful Life Reviews

My Wonderful Life delivers a series of well-shot and acted moments that never come together in the end.

Full Review | Original Score: 7.5/10 | Jan 4, 2023

While the performances are powerful, My Wonderful Life never quite comes together, leaving us with what feels like a bit of a slog.

Full Review | Mar 23, 2022

Although My Wonderful Life tries to depict the struggles of a modern woman in a sprawling dysfunctional family, not much happens. This often feels like a gentle and accepting view of how life's difficulties can bring out the best and worst in us all.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 9, 2022

A dry and somewhat frustrating "Women on the Verge/Woman Under the Influence" dramedy with a contrived mystery to add suspense.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 1, 2022

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My wonderful life.

• Common Sense Says
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Common Sense Media Review

Drama about woman living a secret life; language, drugs.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that My Wonderful Life is a Polish feature that meanders in tone from a drama about infidelity to an almost comic look at the difficulties of an extended family sharing small quarters. Expect frank but not graphic depictions of adult sexuality as the long-married mother of two has an…

Why Age 15+?

A wife has an affair that upsets her family. They meet secretly, but also don't

"F--k," "s--t," "ass," "bastard," "hell," "damn," "crap," "blunt," "horny," and

Adults and teens use marijuana and smoke cigarettes. A teenager gets drunk and v

A woman fears she is sick but learns that nothing is wrong. A woman has worsenin

Any Positive Content?

"Get plenty of sleep, cut down on your vices, and smile more." "If your happines

Jo feels unappreciated at home and looks for happiness elsewhere.

The entire cast is White and Polish.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A wife has an affair that upsets her family. They meet secretly, but also don't do much to hide. A couple is seen making out in the street. Breasts are shown.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

"F--k," "s--t," "ass," "bastard," "hell," "damn," "crap," "blunt," "horny," and "whore."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Adults and teens use marijuana and smoke cigarettes. A teenager gets drunk and vomits. Someone tests positive for mephedrone, an amphetamine.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

A woman fears she is sick but learns that nothing is wrong. A woman has worsening Alzheimer's. Adults discuss the dangers of teen addiction to screen-time. An older woman hits the man running a nursing home.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

"Get plenty of sleep, cut down on your vices, and smile more." "If your happiness depends on other people's decisions you will never be happy."

Positive Role Models

Diverse representations.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Parents need to know that My Wonderful Life is a Polish feature that meanders in tone from a drama about infidelity to an almost comic look at the difficulties of an extended family sharing small quarters. Expect frank but not graphic depictions of adult sexuality as the long-married mother of two has an affair, smokes marijuana, and looks for respite from the burdens of work and caring for her mother and grandchild. Breasts are shown and adults and teens smoke cigarettes and marijuana. Language includes "f--k," "s--t," "ass," "bastard," "hell," "damn," "crap," "blunt," "horny," and "whore." The film won for Best Director at the 2021 Polish Film Festival. In Polish with English subtitles. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say

There aren't any parent reviews yet. Be the first to review this title.

What's the Story?

The title's MY WONDERFUL LIFE, whether an ironic or earnest designation, belongs to Jo (Agathe Buzek), who presides over a large family with her husband Witek (Jacek Braciak). The seemingly happy couple work together at a prep school while caring for her Alzheimer-stricken mother, a teen son, an adult son and his partner, and their incessantly crying 2-year-old. Jo worries about her health and, as if to release some of the pressure, smokes marijuana and has an affair with a goofy fellow teacher. Someone finds out and sends her texts, phone calls, and notes threatening to expose her exploits. Although shaken, she doesn't end her behavior and when the pressures come to a head, the family confronts her.

Is It Any Good?

Although My Wonderful Life tries to depict the struggles of a modern woman in a sprawling dysfunctional family, not much happens. This often feels like a gentle and accepting view of how life's difficulties can bring out the best and worst in us all. Despite the problems -- a boring and prickly marriage, a mother with dementia, one son flunking out of school and another with an entitled wife quick to spout withering comment -- the life described here, a life basically full of love, really isn't that bad. Perhaps the filmmakers want to convey that anyone who lives in a free country and shares a roof overhead and three square meals a day with loved ones, even irritating and selfish loved ones, is still a pretty lucky person enjoying a pretty wonderful life.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about where the director wants our sympathies to lie. Do we disapprove of a woman who is largely unappreciated at home and looks for some distraction outside her marriage? Or does the movie want us to understand her mistakes?

Does the movie suggest that people are neither all good nor all bad? What are some examples of that thinking?

How do you feel about Jo and her family members at the end of the film and why?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : February 28, 2022
• Cast : Agathe Buzek , Jacek Braciak , Adam Woronwicz , Malgorzata Zajaczkowska
• Director : Lukasz Grzegorzek
• Studio : Netflix
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 99 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : February 17, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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What to watch next.

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FILMS / REVIEWS Poland

Review: My Wonderful Life

by  Ola Salwa

04/03/2022 - The third feature by Łukasz Grzegorzek is a delight to watch, boasting an on-screen world that shimmers with melancholy, joy, anger and regret, all at once

The latest global Netflix release, My Wonderful Life   [ + see also: interview: Łukasz Grzegorzek film profile ] , is the third feature by Polish director Łukasz Grzegorzek , and it rightfully won him the Best Director Award at the Gdynia Film Festival last year (see the news ). Grzegorzek’s trademark is making coming-of-age dramedies, with the age part varying from late teens to mid-life.

Jo (a delightful Agata Buzek ), the protagonist of My Wonderful Life , teaches English in a small-town secondary school and is having a secret love affair with the father of one of her students. These clandestine meetings are full of fun, sex and marijuana smoke. So what’s the catch? Jo is in her late forties, is married, and lives with her husband, two sons, grandchild and mother (an Alzheimer sufferer), all under one roof. Her daily life is filled with noise, chaos and spats with pretty much everyone, and about everything. But that’s not all – someone knows about Jo’s extramarital relationship and is blackmailing her with a series of letters and compromising photos. So what about the coming-of-age part? Well, she will need to decide what kind of life she wants to live from now on.

However dark and twisted this may sound, My Wonderful Life is a delight to watch – every character in the film has their own quirks and agenda, and most of their fights are more amusing than dramatic, yet the film doesn’t drift into farce or pure comedy. Grzegorzek infuses the story with different nuances, so that the on-screen world shimmers with melancholy, joy, anger and regret, all at once. His films are often compared by local critics and audiences to American indies that thrive at festivals such as Sundance or SXSW, due to their lightness and free spirit. On top of that, Grzegorzek’s style has a strong Central European vibe and has a lot in common with the mood conjured up by Czech films – that sort of warm humour and peaceful coming to terms with the fact that life is not exactly as wonderful as was promised to us when we were growing up. Jo rebels against her lack of happiness and fulfilment in a rather discreet way: she simply manoeuvres around morals and rules, instead of trying to fight them head on, as many other characters in Polish films would do.

Grzegorzek wrote his script with Agata Buzek in mind, and her performance is just brilliant. She makes her character warm, funny, mysterious and, at the same time, very down to earth. Buzek also has great chemistry with the rest of the main cast: Jacek Braciak (her husband), Adam Woronowicz (her lover), Jakub Zając and Paweł Kruszelnicki (her sons), Wiktoria Wolańska (her daughter-in-law) and Małgorzata Zajączkowska (her mother). And so, evidently, this cool “band” with an awesome lead singer provides plenty of reasons to watch this film.

My Wonderful Life was produced by Poland’s Koskino and had its national theatrical premiere on 29 October last year.

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Dutch director Isabel Lamberti has triumphed in the International Dramatic Competition, while Iwona Siekierzyńska’s Amateurs topped the Polish Film category   

14/09/2021 | Festivals | Awards | Poland

New Horizons’ Polish Days announces its line-up

A total of 20 film projects at various stages of production have been invited to the largest industry event in Poland; among them are those by Aleksandra Terpińska, Łukasz Grzegorzek and Anna Jadowska   

28/07/2021 | New Horizons 2021 | New Horizons Industry

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Netflix’s My Wonderful Life  aka  Moje Wspaniale Zycie is a Polish drama directed and written by Lukasz Grzegorzek. The film stars Agata Buzek in the role of the portagonist named Joanna Lisiecka aka Jo. Other cast members include Jacek Braciak as Witek Lisiecki, Adam Woronowicz as as Maciek, Malgorzata Zajaczkowska as the Grandma, Pawel Kruszelnicki as Jan, Jakub Zajac as Adam, Wiktoria Wolanska as Karina and Leon Grzegorzek as Leos. The runtime of the film is 1 hour 40 minutes with subtitles and audio present both in Polish and English.

– Moje Wspaniale Zycie aka My Wonderful Life Review Does Not Contain Any Spoilers –

Moje Wspaniale Zycie aka My Wonderful Life: It isn’t what it always looks like

Netflix’s latest Polish title might just cover the same old topics of infidelity, breaking free from mundane life, the consequences of it and similar tropes. But, the film somehow elevates your experience with the right use of music, cinematography and direction.

We meet our protagonist Joanna, referred to also as Jo during the course of the film. A working woman with a family that keeps her tied and occupied, Jo’s life seems stressful but, also the ideal suburban one you can imagine. She works as an English teacher in a school where her husband serves as the principal. She is the mother to two sons, one of them in school and, one married, who lives with his wife and child in the same house. There is also Jo’s mother who is a part of this family.

But underneath all the perfection and wonderfulness of this family lies the horrible and, terrifying real truth of life. Jo’s husband is falling apart and her mother is suffering from Alzheimer’s. Her eldest son cannot tolerate being a father with a wife that bickers all the time and, her younger son’s graduation is at a questionable level. With all this on her plate, Jo tries hard to pull up everyone with positivity and keep the family together.

Also Read: What’s Releasing in March 2022 Week 1 on Netflix, Hulu and Others: Lies and Deceit, Fresh and More

But, it isn’t exactly how it looks like as our protagonist has a getaway secret of her own. However, the game of hiding cannot remain buried forever and someone starts to threaten to tear her seemingly perfect life and family apart. How Jo struggles with these changes and pressure in life and if her truth eventually gets revealed forms the overall premise of My Wonderful Life aka Moje Wspaniale Zycie .

Moje Wspaniale Zycie aka My Wonderful Life: Final Verdict

This Polish film on Netflix relies a lot on anticipation and anxiety which psychologically challenges the audiences and invites them to stay invested in the short film. Agata Buzek as the protagonist of this film really shines and you can actually see the turmoil that constantly rages inside her and how desperately she wants to leave it all but she knows she never can. The supporting cast is also perfect in playing their part.

The cinematography of this film isn’t lavish and does not goad of aesthetic aspects but there is a certain charm to it that keeps you engaged, be it the constant close up of the eyes or, the moments of isolation and contemplation, usually bathing the characters in a tinge of yellow.

You can watch the Polish drama My Wonderful Life aka Moje Wspaniale Zycie currently streaming on Netflix .

Also Read: What’s Releasing on Hulu and HBO Max in March 2022? Deep Water, Fresh, The Tourist and More

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My Wonderful Life (2021)

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