Nude Area

Nude Area has a gimmick. The film features no dialogue. This means that while the story is rendered in broad strokes, the visuals are meticulous and stunning. It’s an interesting exercise. On a visual level, director Urszula Antoniak very much succeeds. But can I say that this dialogue-free film kept my attention for its entire run time? I absolutely cannot.

The plot summary of Nude Area tells me that the two leads of the film, Fama and Naomi are teenagers. Though they don’t look like teenagers nor do they ever go to school or interact with their parents. Fama and Naomi take notice of how conventionally attractive they both are and begin a relationship. But Fama isn’t up for acknowledging their fledgling relationship other than when the two girls are alone. The two girls don’t really have any personality. Fama’s major trait is that she’s Muslim. Naomi’s is that she isn’t.

The lack of dialogue really does impede this story. So much of human communication is through speech. Nude Area challenges itself by removing that. And because they do so, there’s so much of these girls’ lives we can never see. And it’s not just for plot reasons, but emotional reasons too. It’s hard to do scenes of major emotion because again, that would require dialogue. This means that Nude Area’s emotional impact is well, muted. It’s difficult to care much about this story when we do only see aesthetic snapshots of these girls’ lives.

But on a visual level, the film does succeed. Every shot in this is so well set up and so beautiful. The film absolutely works as a series of stunning vignettes. As a sizzle reel for Urszula Antoniak, this film is great. It shows how accomplished she is at visuals. And there is enough visual storytelling amongst the sheer beauty to cobble together at least a basic plot. That’s more than many filmmakers could achieve.

Under Antoniak’s eye, every moment of every shot is stunning. The film doesn’t feel real, but like an impossibly beautiful fantasy. It makes sense that at least one of the leads is a model. This film requires not just physical beauty but a way of playing towards camera to portray beauty. The hardest part of this review is not overusing the word beautiful. Because that’s what the film is. Even the nude scenes are beautiful. The line between sexuality and sensuality is thin, but Nude Area falls firmly on the side of sensual. There’s obviously a huge appreciation of women’s bodies. But more as part of a larger canvas of a beautiful shot. The nude scenes are often shower scenes, where water rains down in slow motion on the girls’ bodies. And despite these lengthy titty close-ups, I’d still describe these scenes as beautiful rather than exploitative or puerile.

Though as always, we come back to how thin the story and characters are here. Fama’s Muslim identity is visually present, but there’s no depth to it. The film almost literally can’t say anything about it. The only way you know Fama is Muslim is that she wears a hijab. Later in the film, sometimes she’s in public without it. Wearing or not wearing the hijab would likely be a major decision in a person’s life. But we don’t see any of it. We just see her wearing one sometimes, and not at other points. Ultimately, the depiction of Fama and her culture and religion feels sexualized. Scenes of her not wearing her hijab act primarily as another form of titillating nudity. And regrettably, that’s all the film has to say about this entire religion and the way this particular character relates to it.

While this is a beautiful film, Nude Area is far too thin on plot. Scenes work as stunning vignettes individually. But 80 minutes of characters who have little traits other than their beauty isn’t the most interesting. I would be interested in seeing more from Urzula Antoniak. She clearly knows how to set up a shot. But to get me fully engaged, I’m gonna need some dialogue and a plot rendered with more specificity than Nude Area’s broad strokes.

Overall rating: 5.4/10

Other WLW films in similar genres