Focus on Holland review - NUDE AREA by Urszula Antoniak

Fearless and tasteful depiction of erotic awakening. Urzula Antoniak's film Nude Area screened at the 22nd Febiofest - Prague International Film Festival.

 

Basic universal feelings of longing for love and awakening to physicality are basic themes of Urszula Antoniak's Nude Area, a daring interactive arthouse cinema experience that aims to draw the viewer in with its poetic and audacious approach. The pivotal story is that of two fifteen year old girl, one a rich white girl, the other a less wealthy Arab girl. The setting is Amsterdam. The white girl grows infatuated to a close point of healthy obsession with the other girl, writes poetry for her, follows her around the town and freely imagines the experience of her closeness.

 

There are many elements that are clearly defined in the film. The first is the cultural contrast between the western and the Arab world, as depicted through physicality and eroticism. In the first case, the exposed vulnerability comes from the exposure of the body - in the other from hair. This is of course a simplified summary of the overall depiction of this particularly fascinating and widely unexplored contrast, all the more sensual and innocent because of the daring and sharp edged fact that the two girls are fifteen years old, and their relationship with sexuality is naive and bases itself on impulses more than factual concepts.

 

Nude Area is a film that plays a lot with its themes, by presenting the narrative in a non linear way and also by playing with the real and the fantasised. In other words, we are never told with absolute certainty that what is happening is really happening, or whether it is the fruit of sexual fantasies. The slow, dreamlike pace of the film enhances the organic surrealism. But it is also further portrayed and represented by a lack of dialogue. The characters never talk, and their wooden performances make them all the more mysterious - again referring to their motions and actions triggered by naturalistic impulses.

 

Despite the lack of dialogue, the film cannot be defined as silent. In fact, no definition could be further from the truth, as the almost oniric aura of the feature is also most effective due to particular attention given to music and sound - the music in particular relates to the film in an unusual way, as it is not there to dictate an emotional response to the actions taking place on the screen, but rather to convey the beauty of the images with creative and unobtrusive spontaneousness (sometimes, the music even starts and stops abruptly).

 

A lot of credit must go to the cinematography, infatuated with skin and flesh, caressing and admiring with love and awe the bodies of the girls. A lot of these beautiful moments take place in a nude spa, in a shower, an unsuspecting place where an innocent glance, or a frustrated glance can hide love. But there is no malignance or exploitation in Antoniak's feature, rather an absolutely alternative look at a natural, organic landmark event in adolecensce, so universal that it matters little that, in essence, Nude Area deals with lesbian awakening as well as sexual awakening.


NUDE AREA // a film by Urszula Antoniak... by reelsuspects