“Cold War” isn’t a dusty history lesson. Forget history, “Cold War” is better.

In 2015 Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Ida” won the Best Foreign Language Oscar. “Cold War” has landed him on the red carpet again, with a story you can’t forget and cast you can’t get enough of.

Even if you’re not old enough to remember the Cold War, you’ve experienced the cultural results in films like “James Bond” and “Doctor Strangelove”. You may have glimpsed the western view in Spielberg’s “Bridge of Spies”, starring Tom Hanks. If you’re European, or a cinephile you may have experienced the eastern side of the Cold War in Christian Petzold's “Barbara”, in which Nina Hoss plays a physician trapped in the communist world.

Both films are about people caught up in the politics of the era.

“Cold War” is not. Pawlikowski’s title is misleadingly descriptive.

While the film is about a cold war it’s not the one you’re thinking of. “Cold War” is a double-entendre about two people in love, unable to live either together or apart, who tango back and forth across a divided Europe, but who could as well have tangoed across any other time or place.