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The true story of an athlete turned porn star seems like a subject with huge dramatic potential. How did debutant director Natálie Císařovská deal with him?

The film Her Body, which has been shown in cinemas since last Thursday, wants to look worldly from the first shots. Klára Belicová’s camera follows closely how the heroine climbs the diving board, and conveys to the audience a slight vertigo from the sport, in which concentration cannot be let down even for a tenth of a second.

Close-ups alternate with wholes, in which, on the contrary, the loneliness of the athlete is reflected somewhere up there, where he is fixated on the right moment. In it, a single bounce, a single complicated body movement will decide success or failure.

Documentary filmmaker Císařovská chose a remarkable subject for her feature debut. The story of a twenty-three-year-old woman whose dream of participating in the Summer Olympics in Atlanta in 1996 vanished before her eyes, and so – more or less by accident and definitely completely voluntarily – she decided to use her body in an industry that is not associated with prestige and podiums, is strong alone about myself. Moreover, it ends tragically, with a cruel diagnosis, which Absolonová succumbed to in 2004 at only 27 years old.

The director and co-screenwriter Aneta Honzková did careful research in the form of many hours of interviews with the heroine’s sister Lucia. And it is the split between the siblings, who lived and played sports together until Absolonová, played by Slovak actress Natália Germáni, embarked on a new career path, is one of the central dramas of the narrative.

Her body is notable for its relatively unprejudiced behind-the-scenes look at the porn industry. It does not scandalize the world of wild parties after filming, on the contrary, it points out the neglected fact that – if we put possible moral doubts in parentheses – filming porn is quite hard work. No ambiguity: it’s hours and hours on set, posing in back-breaking positions must be physically and mentally demanding.

Absolonová enters this world as a curious explorer rather than a victim of dubious casting or lewd producers. On the contrary, he enjoys being able to control things again. Because she’s successful, she knows she can kick ass. Which, of course, doesn’t last forever.

As the reality of acting in the porn industry gets more complicated, so do family relationships. The heroine’s sister Lucie, played by Denisa Barešová, bears the worst decision. The taciturn father, played by Martin Finger, hides videotapes of his daughter’s work in a shelf behind bottles of schnapps – not to look at them, but so that no one else can buy them at the local rental shop. Only the mother, played by Zuzana Mauréry, enjoys her daughter’s success, although it is not clear how much she forces herself into a positive role.

Unfortunately, it is the tragic point in the form of Absolonová’s collapse and the subsequent examination that reveals a brain tumor that makes it impossible for the creators to develop or close the story in any way. The porn business is gradually portrayed in an increasingly depraved light, the mixture of physically and mentally demanding filming in combination with alcohol and drugs has a not very positive effect on the protagonist and her colleagues.

But it is impossible to look for any connection between this type of life and the deadly diagnosis. In the end, her body thus fails to say something more about the heroine, her family relationships or the reality of the porn industry than it shows. Sometimes just observing events is not enough.

The most powerful moments come when the central actress participates in the first shoots. At that moment, the camera works in a different “operational mode” than the cameras whose task is to capture “action” for the pleasure of porn viewers.

It focuses on details, but not the kind that hardcore porn audiences crave. Rather, he sensitively examines the heroine’s body in the moments before the actual sex takes place, thus focusing on what may be going on in her mind.

Similarly, at the beginning of the film, the eye of the camera follows the heroine’s body in a swimsuit, again with a different goal than the cameramen of sports broadcasts. What was important was not so much the graceful jump ending with a triple somersault, but rather the tension in the athlete’s head.

It is thus possible to empathize with a woman who supposedly freely disposes of her body, to think about the perhaps surprising parallels between the two activities or the limits of that freedom. But even these considerations remain rather at the level of fleeting thoughts. Soon, performing in porn turns into a routine and the camera does not avoid sharp details of anal sex or other practices.

You can feel a lot of care and hard work behind the film, the creators engaged professionals from both industries, which was not easy, especially in the case of top divers. It is all the more regrettable that the outlined topics lead nowhere.

The split between the two sisters, who together at the beginning euphorically sang the chorus of one of the songs of the Tábor electropunk band Sunshine, while afterwards Lucie cannot come up with Andrea’s name, will be solved by a cruel diagnosis. She also interrupts the heroine’s performance in porn.

Natália Germáni as Andrea Absolonová. | Photo: Etiquette film

There is no room left for catharsis, reconciliation or dramatic twists coming from the inner decisions of the characters. That certainly cannot be blamed on a work that only draws from reality. It just raises the perhaps unpleasant question of how far the cruel fate of Andrea Absolonová is a subject for a fictional drama.

In the end, her body – despite a good camera, a captivating soundtrack by the producer Aid Kid and strong acting performances from most of those involved – seems like a slightly dramatized, more suggestive version of the dictionary entry about a woman who was first an athlete, then a porn actress and then a victim of a malignant disease. Without managing to connect these chapters of her life, confront them or find a perspective that would go beyond summarizing biographical facts.