WORLD VIEW

The Art of Loving: The Story of Michalina Wislocka

Sztuka Kochania

MARIA SADOWSKA
Poland, 2017
120 minutes, Color
Official website

Among her other distinctions, Polish doctor Michalina Wislocka managed to unite the church, the party, and the press's appointed censors in collective agreement: opposition to her publishing, in 1976, the Communist world's first sex manual, The Art of Loving. Wislocka might have been proud of how sexy and honest this film about her is: as portrayed by Magdalena Boczarska, she is at once implacable and shy, a hero to the female patients she teaches about orgasms, but one who privately lives in her head. Not that her life lacked incident—for years she was in a ménage-à-trois that produced two children but also much loneliness. Only later in life did she find the physical happiness she prescribed for others. By addressing women's pleasure, Wislocka's work tweaked the male establishment; the film gleans a particularly East European humor from this. If only the campaign for female empowerment felt dated.—Judy Bloch

In Polish with English subtitles

Co-presented with the Embassy of the Republic of Poland