“Silent Land” is a brittle and biting parable about Europe and widespread attitudes towards the Third World problems of people “over there,” on the other side of the Mediterranean.

Director and co-writer Aga Woszcynska serves up a drama on low heat, ever so lightly simmering in the sun of an Italian island, long a favorite of tourists (Sassari, Italy was the filming locale) where a young Polish couple has come to vacation.

It is a tad too quiet and deliberate for its own good. But as a story of immigrant labor, an accident, and the indifference with which one and almost all treat what is by any measure a tragedy, it invites the viewer to test one’s own attitudes towards “The Other,” especially as it packs its biggest punch for the finale.

Anna (Agneiszka Zulewska) and Adam (Dobromir Dymecki) have a minor beef with landlord Fabio (Marcello Romolo). Their “first world problem” is that the seaside villa they’ve rented has a busted pool. And all of Fabio’s offers of “discount” and meals at “my trattoria in the village) won’t shake the Poles from their conviction that he simply get the pool fixed.

No worries, they all eventually agree. “Two days, tops” (in Polish, Italian and English, with subtitles) an it’ll be filled.

So their reverie of sun, isolation and sex gets interrupted by hunky, shirtless Rahim (Ibrahim Keshk) who starts the day with a jackhammer, and struggles with language barrier problems and not knowing where the hose to fill it is, etc.

And then we see Rahim take a tumble into the pool and not come out. Adam and Anna seem somewhat uptight, but otherwise unaffected. The cops who show up mutter about “no time for a case like this, now,” and do the bare minimum. Fabio just adds another apology to the clients.

But there was CCTV footage of the event. The police, lackadasical as they are, have questions. The marriage is strained as they try to get their stories straight.

Perhaps they should take the one English-speaking policeman’s advice. “Don’t worry” about it. “They don’t seem to care about anything around here,” Adam says to Anna.

There’s a hint of “Force Majeure” in this story of detached foreigners who do somewhat less than the humane minimum when something bad happens on their vacation. Marital discord ensues.

What version of “the story” will they tell the dive instructor couple (Alma Jodorowsky, Jean-Marc Barr) they befriend? Who is judging whom, and what are they covering up?

Woszczynska’s script, co-written with Piotr Litwin, throws in a stray dog to underscore the obvious. Everybody is nice to the dog, even the Middle Eastern immigrant laborer. The Poles might suspect him of eating off their table when their backs are turned.

But there’s a tolerance toward the canine that not everybody shares for the rest of humanity as tiny clues about the politics of the “haves” runs up against the inconveniences — “ruined” tourist destinations and vacations — of the desperate “have nots.”

Dymecki and Zulewska deftly convey a long connection, a couple “on the same page” until something happens to shake that up. That relationship, with its judgements, feels lived-in and real.

Woszczynska tell this story with a mesmerizing deliberateness that won’t be to every taste, and its subtlety mutes the movie’s impact, if not its message. But for a debut feature, she’s made a litmus test drama set in a stunningly scenic place, and dared us to really “see” it and those who live there and who visit, and wonder if we’re any better than they are.

Rating: unrated, violence, sex, nudity

Cast: Dobromir Dymecki, Agnieszka Zulewska, Alma Jodorowsky, Jean-Marc Barr and Marcello Romolo.

Credits: Directed by Aga Woszczynska, scripted by Piotr Litwin and Aga Woszczynska. A Film Movement+ release, also on Amazon Prime Video.

Running time: 1:53