Her lover has asked her to come away with him. “Then,” he says, “we’ll buy a dog, get married, have children, get a house.” But Ida’s question, again, is, “And then?” To this, all he can say is: “The usual. Life.”
Ida is a novice nun. Before taking her vows, she has been sent into the world to meet her aunt, her only surviving relative. During the film, she learns that she is Jewish and discovers how her parents were murdered during the war. The aunt is a worldly state prosecutor who urges Ida to abandon the convent and live life to the full, but who is herself burdened by her own past. When the aunt commits suicide, Ida tries out cigarettes, vodka, high-heels, jazz and finally sex with a young saxophonist she has befriended. But as the film ends, we see her back in her nun’s habit, returning to the convent.
The saxophonist offers love, domesticity, contentment. With her repeated “and then?” Ida pushes to its limits the question: “what would make such a life worth living?”
Her lover is stymied. And indeed, it is unclear what answer can be given when the demand for justification is pushed this far. We see Ida reject a life of worldly engagement and choose instead a different kind of commitment. She does not explain this choice. Her lover’s answer: “Life” is the last word in the film, followed only by the music of Bach, as Ida trudges back to the convent, against the traffic. We are left wondering whether any ultimate choice of this kind can be fully explained or justified. Can there be an ultimate answer to Ida’s question, “and then?”, and if so, what form could such an answer take?
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