Directed by:
Natálie CísařovskáCinematography:
Klára BelicováComposer:
Aid KidCast:
Natalia Germani, Denisa Barešová, Zuzana Mauréry, Martin Finger, Cyril Dobrý, Zuzana Stivínová, Tereza Švejdová, Štěpán Lustyk, Karolína Krézlová (more)Plots(1)
When an injury ends her career, Olympic diver Andrea Absolonová makes a daring switch to a controversial profession. Based on a true story. (Netflix)
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Reviews (10)
Zero psychology among the characters and zero inventiveness in the directing. Just creative disengagement in following a strange life story. It’s as if I was reading a superficial tabloid article or watching a mediocre made-for-TV movie. However, seeing a close-up of vaginal penetration on the big screen, if only for two seconds, was a pleasant experience and left me surprised by the filmmakers’ boldness.
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The great work with music and detailed camera want to let you know that this has something to do with an artistic generational statement, but that is not the case. The film is absolutely lacking in passion and a drop of drama. The transformation from a promising athlete to a porn star is rushed, and fatal injuries are presented as trivialities that don't really hurt. It lacks doubts about one's own dignity, a stronger clash with family values (the unused character of the father), and anything else that would make it interesting (besides the theme). It's like porn - it gets straight to the point, ticking off towards a predictable climax, but you catch yourself tending to skip over some passages.
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The life of Andrea Absolonova, a promising diver *slash* famous porn actress, whose existence I had no idea about before watching this film, offers a rather interesting subject and it is a bit of a pity that Her Body didn't use its full potential. Natálie Císařovská's feature directorial debut doesn't really break out of the genre of biographical drama, although it does contain some interesting motifs and shots. For me, the film's biggest weakness was the sharp (or flinty) transition between the main character's two very different careers and the superficially portrayed attitude of Andrea's family towards her post-accident life. P. S. The censored scenes didn't even need to be there!
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Adam: Why are you hopping? Andrea: Why are you walking? This bit of dialogue essentially contains everything that we learn about Andrea Absolonová’s motivations over the course of (not quite) two hours. Her Body is thus an apt title. The film makes no effort to psychologise her (and it is more consistent in this respect than the recent Brothers). We see from up close what her body has been through in various phases of her life, but we do not get a look inside her head. The scene involving an interview with a journalist indicates that she just didn’t have much to say. In the context of biographical dramas that have the need to explain why someone did this and that, it is an original approach. But to what end? The inability to go in depth isn’t offset by the originality or intensity of the stylistic techniques. It is neither carnal nor hard enough for a body horror movie. The only unpleasant scene is the one in which Andrea is on her hands and knees after being injured and stretches her bruised body. Otherwise, the film is remarkably easy to watch. Even when the protagonist is lying in the hospital with a neck brace or with a brain tumour, she looks great (several times I recalled what Ebert said about “Ali MacGraw’s Disease”: a movie illness in which the only symptom is that the patient grows more beautiful until finally dying). In fact, the family scenes with her father and mother are painful, though only because of their theatrical stiffness and unbelievability, when I had the feeling that I was watching several strangers (who conspicuously do not age with the passage of time) pretending to be blood relatives. We learn very little about the workings of the porn industry at the turn of the millennium. The story is cut down to basic events. There is no context (the motif of working with one’s body as a tool could have been made more multi-dimensional by emphasising the obsession with performance and success that became normalised in the 1990s). Andrea simply just has sex with various porn actors. She doesn’t deal with anything else around her. She doesn’t have to. Everyone is extremely kind and understanding. It’s nice that the film doesn’t take a moralistic stance toward porn (unlike, for example, the Swedish film Pleasure, which didn’t take a stance toward anything due to its cautious approach to the lives of actual people). It’s simply another physical activity at which the ambitious protagonist wants to be the best…which is simplistically emphasised by Adam’s line “you’re not in a competition here” (and there are plenty of similarly superfluous, leading statements). But what else? The problem with the film is not that it doesn’t go to any great lengths to explain what we see, but that it simply has nothing to explain. It’s hollow, it’s neither entertaining nor moving, and it doesn’t create dramatic tension. It does not have a clear theme or point of view (a problem of dramaturgy). It merely reconstructs a few loosely connected episodes from Absolonová’s life without offering anything that would be surprising. She was an excellent diver, then she got injured, then she became a famous porn actress without making any visible effort and then died young. She had a close relationship only with her younger sister, but in a film teetering between docudrama and family melodrama, this motif is just as feeble and poorly developed as all of the others (e.g. the eating disorder). There is no added drama or emotion, no deeper reflection on anything. Just her (still attractive) body. 50%
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18+ Natálie Císařovská thinks similarly to me. She became acquainted with the fate of Andrea Absolonová (1976-2004) through her obituary, which later inspired her to draw parallels between elite sports and pornography, and she built a feature film based on this reflection. Based on the reactions of ordinary people and (so-called) professional reviews, I conclude that the majority of Císařovská's audience eagerly swallowed the film's promotional game. Some are even disappointed that Her Body is not more sexy or does not follow the expected downward spiral. However, Císařovská does not see Absolonová's career change as a moral downfall, but as a logical step in the given situation. Her film speaks much more about how toxic the environment of elite sports is, and how easily one can treat the body as a mere tool if it is taken away from you in childhood. What happened to the main character in her life? Overnight, she had to end her sports career due to a neck injury. She had no alternative career plan (here the exclamation mark is directed at her parents and coach), and after recovering, she only had her trained body left. For the first time, she could decide for herself about it, gradually recovering from training drills, starting to eat, menstruate (another exclamation mark for neglected care by her parents and coach), and making decisions about her sex life. And the only thing she could work with was her ambition for success. The Czech porn industry at that time offered her a new opportunity. It was not just a factory for cheap internet scenes; it was a world in itself, where good money was made, and some awards carried some weight. Those uninvolved may not be able to grasp this difference, but it is certainly possible to read the memoir book by Tarra White "Porno a já" (Porn and Me), who, according to her own words, entered the industry six months after Absolonová's/Ley de Mae death and experienced all the emotions of mourning with her former colleagues. Those who have the courage to watch some of Ley de Mae's full movies can certainly understand how successful she was and that she really managed to travel with this profession, and it did not just remain as empty promises of the small Czech production. ___ I was exceptionally at a screening in a full movie theater, and it was interesting to observe various false moans of dismay and reassurances among the seats in the style of "it is really terrible what is happening on the screen." I remember similar entertaining reactions from the screenings of Nymph()maniac: Volume 1 ;)
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