Idiosyncratic Ambiguities of Queer(able) Experience in Polish Film in the Early 2010s

Abstract

ABSTRACT The search for queer/queerable moments in the post-1989 Polish cinema is a frustrating feat. While increasingly featuring LGBTQ+ characters, especially in the current decade, Polish cinema films rarely break away from heteronormative and, less frequently, homonormative stereotypization, which takes on a limited range of offensive or empathetic manifestations. The former, represented by low-brow comedies, such as Weekend (dir. Cezary Pazura, 2010) and Sex Change (dir. Konrad Aksinowicz, 2009), would continue the infamous tendency of cis-male filmmakers to poke fun at anal sex and dildos, which they apparently identify as representative of non-heteronormative sexual practices and behaviours. The latter, usually featuring one or two gay or lesbian characters in the roles of sidekicks to the protagonists, would constitute sympathetic responses to socio-political situations of LGBTQ individuals in Poland, marked by homophobia, coming-out hardship, and/or heavily non-egalitarian legislation in Poland. Yet, in the early 2010s, a few cinema films brought about cracks in the dominating trend, proposing instead multi-layered though heavily ambiguous studies of non-heteronormative characters living in contemporary Poland. Suicide Room (dir. Jan Komasa, 2011) presents a story of adolescent homophobia in a private secondary-school setting, simultaneously questioning the sexual identification and cis-ness of the protagonist. Floating Skyscrapers (dir. Tomasz Wasilewski, 2013) focuses on a cis-male swimmer who falls in love with an openly gay male while being in a romantic relationship with a woman. Secret (dir. Przemyslaw Wojcieszek, 2012) combines a reflection on non-heteronormative forms of kinship and of sexual identification with the non-memory of Shoah – it is one of several films released around that time, which are reactionary towards the discussion concerning the Polish participation in the pogroms on the Jewish Poles in the 1930s-1940s.