French painter Apollonia Socol, who recently graduated from Beaux-Arts in Paris, is heading to the United States in pursuit of the bigger picture. She finds it, after fashion, that a wealthy collector commissioned her to produce 10 paintings a month. It’s an industrial approach to art that PhD maker Lea Glob views with skepticism: “Why would you only buy art when it’s so much cheaper to buy an artist?” She asks. But in a less pessimistic way, Glob’s unusual and new film “Apolonia, Apolonia” invests heavily in Sokol itself, making the artist a kind of live installation that the Glob camera has been closely watching for 13 years. Sokol’s paintings, the large-scale slightly distorted images of human subjects in frighteningly relaxed states, are amazing, but not quite as interesting as their restless, endless creator of self-doubt.
As a portrait of the artist as a young woman, then, “Apolonia, Apolonia” is indeed layered and grand, pondering as do questions of individual creative principle, the predominantly patriarchal functions of critique and nepotism and the economic reality of millennial bohemianism in its leisurely but progressively two-hour run time. But Globe, the Danish director who staged a major festival in 2015, achieved similar success with the ambitious, art-centric “Olmo and the Seagull,” complicating matters even more, as her own experience as a creator, feminist and finally as a mother weaves into her challenging path. Some may find the inner focus of the film’s closing stages too interesting, but this IDFA entry – which was produced for HBO Max in Europe – remains a standout and far-reaching feat, guaranteed with more festival play and dedicated interest.
If sometimes Sokol is not confident in her artist’s gaze, she is never shy about the face of the camera. Before the Glob’s constantly emotional lens, she either dances hilariously or settles in her most natural, unfiltered portrait, never forgetting that she’s being watched but totally relaxed with attention. This makes it the perfect focal point for a documentary, and you can see why Glob, by her on-screen acknowledgment, didn’t know when to set the camera aside, to summon time in a personal narrative that never quite reached a point or point of comfort. . (Why that? He first met her in 2009, and she still calls home.
As she completes her studies in contrasting fine arts, Sokol transforms the theater into a temporary inn and community center for a diverse group of friends, artists, and activists — one of them, Ukrainian feminist activist Oksana Shachko, becomes closest friends with the seemingly multinational Sokol, whose relationship gives this sprawling film an anchor. Huge sentimental. Sokol’s art thrives on the diversity and energy of her highly social home life; When the stage is finally restored and she is forced to share a small apartment with her mother and Oksana, her work, in turn, seems to lose some of that dynamism. She graduated, albeit not with distinction, and was shocked by her professors’ statements that her paintings were less interesting than her character.
They will not correctly tell a student that she is probably angry. However, her work seems to miss some of her chaotic approach to life, and “Apolonia, Apolonia” enters its most tense and exciting phase as it pursues this X-factor away from home – first in New York and then in Los Angeles, where it has caught the attention of a South African art collector. Controversial Stefan Simchowitz (dubbed the art world’s “Devil’s Shepherd” by the New York Times), who has made her work with little regard for her work process, is remarkable in his appreciation of the results. For the first time, Sokol is showing a prolific career path as an artist. Of course, all this freezes her inspiration.
what do you want? Determined to forge her own path, and outright hate to start a family, Sokol remains unsure as she reaches her thirties, moving from country to country before settling, at least for a while, at home again. Watching it, however, seems to reveal the filmmaker’s personal and artistic concerns, as the doc’s focus shifts toward Glob’s difficult pregnancy, adjusting her priorities in its wake. Looking at great art often clears our minds, sharpens our thinking and invites new ideas; In “Apolonia, Apolonia” the long push of someone else’s artistic process seems to do the same for the woman behind the camera.
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