Sexmission (1984)

Poland

4*
Director:
Juliusz Machulski
Screenwriters:
Juliusz Machulski
Jolanta Hartwig
Pavel Hajný
Director of Photography:
Jerzy Łukaszewicz

Original title: Seksmisja

Running time: 116 minutes

This Polish film from the early 1980s is at times hilarious and very often terribly kitsch but can also be rather uncomfortable given the basic plot of a chauvinist protagonist facing off against feminism run wild in 2044.

Opening in 1991 with the arrival of a doctor whose one hand is limp and covered by a glove (the Dr. Strangelove reference cannot be by accident), named Dr. Kuppelweiser, it is said that cryogenesis has developed to a point where an experiment is feasible. Two men, the overweight and bombastic Maksymilian and the slim, more bookish Albert, leave their loved ones behind in the name of science and are scheduled to return three years later.

But plans don’t always work out the way we expect them to, and they wake up in 2044 in a world without any men — a “lesbian utopia” where reproduction is accomplished through asexual parthenogenesis, and any deviations (i.e. men) from the ideal are scheduled for naturalization, through which they will become female.

Maksymilian and Albert are certainly not in the mood to have their sex changed, and Maksymilian start hatching a plan to seduce the female population en masse. His thinking, rarely questioned by the filmmaker, is that women need men and men need women. And yet, there is a revolutionary underground force of women who like to experiment with each other (a scene that exhilarates the two men) and many of the powerful women give off lesbian vibes.

But leaving director Machulski’s confused contemplation of gender equality aside for a moment, it is important to note the film as a slightly subversive record of its time. While never as overtly satirical as Stanisław Bareja’s Miś, another Polish classic from 1981, there are moments when we can see Machulski making light of the political situation in Poland in the 1980s while at the same time underlining its seriousness.

An obvious example is Maksymilian’s realisation that, by sleeping for 53 years, he missed out completely on getting his long-awaited flat from the government in 1998. While it may not seem like such a big deal, since he was frozen in 1991, the film itself was released in 1984, and many Polish viewers would have viewed the year 1998 in that context, in other words a wait of 14 years.

But another example is more opaque, as it is tied to the film’s very foundation. It provides a moment reminiscent of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village when, towards the end, we discover that things on Earth are not really quite as bad as the all-female population have led themselves to believe, and in fact the major players are only pretending to safeguard lower-ranking members in order to maintain control. This power they exert in order not to lose control is actually very easily comparable to the regime of the Communist Party of the time, and the lies that are told about life outside the confines of their bubble can be equated to lies (or exaggerations) told about the West.

In these final scenes, a revelation is also made about the existence of a cross-dresser that narrowly escapes labelling as transgenderphobic. Jerzy Stuhr, who plays the slightly heavy-set Maksymilian, at one point goes on a kissing rampage in the all-female world, which causes many women to pass out. This reaction is for comical effect, but also creates the impression that women and men necessarily need each other for sexual satisfaction. And when the one woman is revealed to be a man, the psychological effect of pretending to be something you are not is not addressed at all; instead, there is a substantial assumption that things will immediately go back to normal and he will simply “be a man”.

Sexmission is more about comedy that about filmmaking. The images are often a mess, following no particular point of view or sequence, and in on particular shot the focus is racked completely out of sync with the actions it seeks to highlight. The story is lighthearted and easy to enjoy, and the young blond girl who is the principal guardian of Maksymilian and Albert in the future, Lamia Reno, is particularly effective as a strong woman whose sexuality makes her more amenable to sexual persuasion. Students of feminism will have a field day tearing the film apart, and for most 21st-century viewers the film will also provide its share of uncomfortable moments, though Machulski is not entirely indifferent to man’s negative influence on the world, as is made clear when we learn wars and venereal diseases are a thing of the past thanks to the extinction of man.

Why Competitions (2011)

Poland / Germany

4.5*
Director:
Christine Jezior
Screenwriters:
Christine Jezior
Oskar Jezior
Directors of Photography:
Phillip Kaminiak
Theo Solnik

Running time: 78 minutes

Original title: Dlaczego konkurs

Ivo Pogorelić thinks a lot of himself. In 1980, after an unconventionally spirited performance at the revered International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition, this young Yugoslavian pianist was eliminated from the contest – upon this announcement, members of the jury, including world-renowned pianist and former winner of the competition, Martha Argerich, resigned in protest. He became a sensation overnight and achieved much greater fame than the eventual winner of the competition that year, Đặng Thái Sơn.

The title asks (though without the question mark — Robert Zemeckis once remarked that no film ending in a question mark has ever done well at the box office, and therefore his own, very successful, Who Framed Roger Rabbit omitted this punctuation mark) what purpose these kinds of music competitions serve and the experts that are interviewed have very different opinions. Most of them agree, and point to Pogorelić’s subsequent career, that competitions do not ensure success for the winner. Of course, his case is a little different from the context of the other performers every year, and the film also looks at a range of other pianists to examine the validity of the experts’ statements.

Why Competitions is an insightful document of the world of competitive piano playing: using the quinquennial Chopin competition in Warsaw as a starting point, the filmmaker interviews all the major players, including many jurors past and present, and tries to piece together the varying opinions about and reactions to the jury’s decision in 1980. The film also looks at the decision in 1975 to award the first prize to the young Pole, Krystian Zimerman, instead of the Russian players who would receive the second, third and fourth prizes.

From these conversations with the different pianists, a range of political issues arises, for example we learn that Russian players, whatever their accomplishments at the competition, would not be allowed to perform outside the USSR afterwards. In the meantime, another player from outside the country – even Poland’s Zimerman – would have the opportunity to play around the world and establish a great career.

The human dimension of the jurors is also underlined and pianist Jeffrey Swann makes a very valid point when he states that the current system of points allows jurors to punish more than it rewards: A maximum of 25 points may be awarded, and often the jurors would give 16 or 17, but if they want to make a point by punishing a player because of style of appearance or whatever, they could give 0 (as happened with Pogorelić and many others), effectively ending that individual’s chances of going through to the next round. Lidia Grychtołówna, who is both a pianist and a juror, makes a similar point when she acknowledges: “At competitions, both candidates and jurors make mistakes. The difference is that jurors go unpunished.”

The more general question of the need for juries and competitions is also treated to some screen time, and Jeffrey Swann is particularly amused by the fact that he received 25 from one judge, while another gave him 0. The possible political motivations behind such decisions are cited, but one juror, Kazimierz Kord, warns us not to read too much into the disconnect between the audience’s reaction and the judges’ reaction to a piece: “Sometimes the public will applaud a performance anyway, even if they don’t understand the requirements [for interpreting Chopin].” I found this statement a little condescending, though perhaps well-intentioned.

But time and again the film comes back to the very vain, pouting Pogorelić, stroking a small dog on his lap, who claims that people are envious of his beauty and his talent, and while some might debate the latter, his claim that he is beautiful (or rather, “well-preserved [...] Look: no wrinkles!”) will certainly generate some laughter. The only slightly frustrating part of the film was the otherwise agreeable Kevin Kenner who speaks for a long time in very American-inflected German before finally switching to his more natural mother tongue of English. I also would have preferred to see more of Martha Argerich, who contributes a single sentence to the discussion, or Krystian Zimerman, who is completely absent from the film.

Why Competitions manages to cram a lot of political, social and historical commentary into its 85 minutes and does so with a sense of rhythm and storytelling that is truly breathtaking, and without ever using a voice-over or explanatory text. It is a film whose theme is universal and whose specifics are always interesting.

A must-see.

Viewed at the Jihlava International Film Festival 2011