Andreas

VIFF 2023 Review: Apolonia, Apolonia

Jon The BlogcentricLeave a comment
French painter Apolonia Sokol and her attempt to make a career as an artist is the subject of the documentary Apolonia, Apolonia.

Those of you who are into the new artists may or may not know who French painter Apolonia Sokol is. The documentary Apolonia, Apolonia appears to be a documentary about Sokol, but becomes a lot more.

The film starts in 2013 as Apolonia gets herself ready for her art exhibit. The film then flashes back to 2009 when Danish film maker Lea Glob first meet the young Apolonia after just graduating from the Ecole National Superior de Beaux-Arts de Paris. She talks of her childhood of just growing up, the daughter of two actors, with her mother in an artist’s flat owned by a Parisian theatre company. She also reveals she had cancer as a child and was not expected to survive but the nuns prayed over her and she made it. As Apolonia has graduated, she decides she wants to be a professional artist. She feels it’s in her. She’s grown up her whole life around the artistic friends. Her artistic influence throughout her life is inseparable from her. Though it comes right after her professor tells her that her paintings are less interesting than her personality.

Undaunted, she starts her first works in Paris. She decides with her first paintings what her art will be about. They won’t simply be portraits of people, mostly women. She aims to get to know the subjects she paints more intimately and wants that reflected in her paintings. For painting women, she has a goal of redefining the modern woman through her paintings. She sets up her works in her flat which she continues to hold parties with many artistic types. Soon the theatre building she’s lived in her whole life is repossessed and her mother has to find a new apartment. One woman she meets from a party, a Ukrainian woman named Oksana, soon becomes Apolonia’s girlfriend and she starts living in her apartment with the mother. Oksana, who formed a feminist activist group at her college called Femen, is very understanding of Apolonia’s artistic goals, unlike Apolonia’s recent ex-boyfriend. Early in her pursuits, she has many art exhibitions in Paris and various cities in France. Apolonia continues her works just as both Oksana and her mother are living in the apartment and it makes things cramped.

It’s only a matter of time until Apolonia captures the eye of someone big in the arts world. His name is Stefan Simchowitz and he is famous for being a renowned art collector. Simchowitz sees promise in Apolonia’s works and he offers her a ‘big break’ where she can have her art viewed in Los Angeles by some of the biggest names in the art world. There is one catch; the deal includes a minimum number of paintings to create. This becomes a case of both ambition and frustration for Apolonia. She struggles with that demand with the number of paintings she tries to do simultaneously, with the expense of her flat in Los Angeles, with the expense of her painting materials, and her loved ones being thousands of miles away. When the works are finally launched on display, her works get a lot of good reviews. She also gets some critiques including one critic saying that her works look more forced than inspired.

Over time, Apolonia continues to paint and continues to showcase her works around the world in France, Denmark, other American cities, Argentina and Turkey. As her exposure grows, things become more difficult for her. She questions her artistry and if it should even submit to commercial pressures. Things also stand in the way with the relations with people closest to her. The relationship with Oksana ends and her new love is a man. She’s still insistent on not being a mother, and even has an abortion. Then in 2018 while doing an exhibit in another country, Oksana commits suicide. It breaks Apolonia’s heart, but she paints her memory in her next paintings. Then suddenly, the filmmaker herself becomes hospitalized after giving birth. Lea, the director, is not supposed to make it, but she recovers. Flashing forward to the 2020’s, Apolonia has been honored for her works by the artistic board of the French government. She reflects on all it took for her to make it to this level.

This is a telling documentary. It is very rare for a documentary to showcase an artist and their attempt to make it in the arts work from their very start to when they finally make it. As we follow the artist’s path, we can easily see why Apolonia would want to be an artist. She was surrounded by the arts and artistic people throughout her life. It eventually becomes her turn to express herself. We get a look at all the works she creates and why she paints she does. We see all the difficulties Apolonia goes through to achieve her renown such as her first exhibitions, her first contract, the cost of creating the many works expected of her, the critics she has to deal with, the sexism in the arts world, the loss of her former girlfriend. Even family situations as her father wants her to become a mother but her grandmother is fine if she doesn’t have children. It’s a long 13 year struggle that comes with the triumph in the end. Anyone who’s interested in making it as an artist should see this. It will show them a lot and remind others familiar with the arts world it’s still hard to make it as an artist. Always was.

Those who watch this documentary will also see it’s not just about Apolonia Sokol. The film is also about the documentarian herself. As she continues to film Apolonia and her life, she grows as a human. Apolonia’s emergence as a great in the world of art coincides with Lea’s emergence as a documentarian and also as she grows as a person. In a bizarre twist of fate, Lea also cheats death as she was given a low chance of surviving after her child’s birth. Just like Apolonia was given a low chance of surviving her childhood bout with cancer. Sometimes it seems the two were fated to be together.

This documentary is unique that it mixes three different stories into one and somehow pieces it together well. It first comes as a film that follows a young emerging artist as she works to establish herself. It shows the works she does, her inspiration, her free personality and the sexist hurdles she tries to overcome. It also shows her in her personal life. It shows her as she tries to establish herself as an adult and faces the pressures from family and others to find someone she can commit herself to or even the pressure to become a mother. It also shows her relationships: first with a Ukrainian woman named Oksana, then with a French man. There’s also dealing with Oksana’s suicide which hurts Apolonia to this day. Finally there’s the filmmaker herself Lea Glob. Just as Lea helps make Apolonia in her film, it becomes a case where Apolonia makes Lea. Definitely a documentary that goes beyond its original mission.

Top accolades belong to Lea Glob. From first meeting Apolonia in 2009 to constantly coming back to her to tracing her career’s biggest moments, she captures an artist in the making. She captures an artist’s soul with a fierce feminist attitude that she includes in her works. She captures the difficulties Apolonia faces to make it as an artist, especially sexism and capitalism. She captures Apolonia’s relationships with the people around her and some of the heartbreak she experiences. She also captures her own unity with Apolonia as she is also an against-all-odds survivor story too. One could joke the two may be long lost sisters!

This film has already won many a documentary award at film festivals. Among them, wins in documentary categories at the Amsterdam International Documentary Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, the CPH: DOX Festival, the Goteberg Film Fest and the One World International Human Rights film Festival

Apolonia, Apolonia is a documentary intended to track the growth and progress of a rising artist, but it also tracks the growth and progress of the film maker herself. It’s rare to see and it captures your intrigue too.

VIFF 2015 Review: Tough Love (Härte)

Jon The BlogcentricLeave a comment

Tough Love is a docudrama of the rough past of World karate champion Andreas Marquardt (right) who is played by Hanno Koffler (left) in his younger days.
Tough Love is a docudrama of the rough past of Andreas Marquardt (right) who is played by Hanno Koffler (left) in his younger days.

Tough Love is a film that tells a story of a life no one would want to have but turns out shining in the end.

The film begins with 59 year-old Andreas Marquardt heading a karate school in Berlin. He’s a former World champion and he enjoys teaching young children.  Parents are very trustworthy of him despite his past. It’s after this introduction that we learn of his shady past.

Andreas was born in Berlin in 1956. His father was abusive to the point he poured a bucket of cold water on him on a winter’s day when he was an infant. His mother divorced his father but that didn’t prevent his father from abusing him again. One time his father taught him how to handshake and squeezed his hand so hard he broke three of Andreas’ bones. Abuse wasn’t just with his father. He lived with his mother and grandparents. His mother would ask him to do sexual favors that were, in a word, unspeakable.

It’s not to say, Andreas was devoid of a proper parent figure. His grandparents played that role. At sixteen, Andreas finally moved out on his own. He pursued a job of pimping as a way to provide a living and pay for his karate training. He also took a job at a funeral home as a way to hide his pimp money from the taxman. One day in the late 70’s, there was a 16 year-old girl who would change his life. Her name was Marion. At first Andreas asked her to do sexual favors and even be one of his hookers under his wing. She agreed however had the feeling she would win his love one day.

This would go on for many years. Marion would continue to work for Andreas but also try to win his love. There were two instances like a Christmas and a breakfast in bed that Marion tried to send him the message of her love but Andreas reacts violently to it and insists she works the business. Later on, Marion takes the witness stand against her father for sexual abuse. Andreas is in the stands and he is surprised to see how her abuse story almost mirrors his own. He’s even given a wake-up call when he sees Marion lying on the streets one night after nearly being beaten to death.

However Andreas’ problems don’t end there. Eventually the police do catch up with his antics and he is arrested in 1994 and put into prison for four years. Marion is able to run a gym that he owns and even sends him a message outside the prison walls that she’s on his mind. Another incident leads Andreas to an additional four years in prison. During that time, he sees his mother for the last time and tells her off just weeks before she dies. Once released from prison, Andreas begins a change of heart and leaves the prostitution business behind. The one thing of it that wasn’t left behind was Marion. It became clear to him she was his soul mate. To this day Andreas doesn’t miss his pimping business.

The thing with this film is that it appears like it’s trying to be both a documentary and a live-action drama. It flashes from Andreas talking of his shady past, in which he also wrote a book on in which this film is based, to the past being acted out by actors. It may have been done before but it’s a question on whether it was done right. I know the director Rosa von Praunheim also included some other creative choices like images of furniture painted on the walls of the setting rather than actual furniture props. I feel that was presented well. I don’t know if the images of furniture worked with this film.

Another choice that had me wondering was if it was a smart choice not to have the actors playing Andy and Marion–Hanno Koffler and Luise Heyer– age. As you probably saw, the actors don’t age chronologically as the timeline passed over the 25 year span. I just wonder in von Praunheim had that as a point to the film.

One choice of von Praunheim’s in which I give her credit for is making the audience Andy during the childhood drama scenes instead of hiring an actor to play Andy. Like how we see Andy’s father looking at us as he gives Andy his bone braking handshake or how his mother looks at us as she’s molesting him or eve oralizing him. Yes, I’m sure people don’t like seeing those kinds of images of children abused whether in fiction or real life. I think it was decided to have the audience be Andy instead for the sake of the sensitive nature. It had to be told but it had to be made watchable.

One thing I think von Praunheim is trying to do in the film is not just tell Andy’s story but also to show how this story is all too common. We hear the story all the time of children who are sexually abused by their parents or other people and they grow up to make the bad choice of going into jobs of ill repute. It’s a story we see all too often. Even seeing what his mother did to him makes you think that where he got his misogyny from. I myself believe that a lot of misogynist men probably adopted that attitude or a hatred toward women from an unhealthy home life. Including Andy’s feelings into the film adds to the theme. You can see in his face why he can’t forgive his parents for what they did to him. Hard feelings run deep. You could easily see in the drama why Andy has feelings to his grandfather when he dies but none to his mother.

However there are times I think of this film to be as much about Marion as it is about Andreas. Andreas became a shady person but it was Marion who felt love for him from the start and knew she would be his one day. It was surprising she was willing to make a prostitute for him of herself during that time. It’s also very unfortunate she had to deal with the verbal and physical abuse from Andreas all those years. Most people would say it would be foolish for a woman to stay with such an abusive man. Even I would want Marion to leave him. However she saw something in him that she knew he was worth loving and worth staying with. The film left me convinced Marion was a godsend to Andreas. The film even left me thinking as well this may be Andreas’ love letter to Marion.

The film does an ambitious job of trying to mesh drama pieces and interview pieces to both make the story come alive and tell the facts. Even taking Andreas back to key places in his life like the prison or the street corner of his arrest or even the cemetery grass area where he scattered his mother’s ashes is another ambitions technique too. I will admit I did question the choices and even the frequency as it goes from drama to documentary. However I would find it hard for me to make better choices. Hanno Koffler and Luise Hayer were good choices to play Andy and Marion. They did well in their roles but they could have aged physically as the time line progressed. Katy Karrenbauer was good as Andy’s mother. She made you want to hate her.

Tough Love tells a story of a life damaged, of a life causing hurt and of a life redeemed, and of the woman that saw the beauty inside the beast. It’s a story that mixes documentary-style interviewing with drama to deliver a story that’s dark and ugly but ends on a beautiful note.