365 Days ★★
POLISH erotic drama 365 Days is one of the strangest films currently showing on Australian Netflix.
I say ‘strangest’ because it includes plenty of scenes that sit somewhere between soft and hard pornography.
The film has drawn accusations of condoning kidnapping and rape, but it’s way too over-the-top to get that concerned about.
It’s based on the first book of a trilogy published in Poland across 2018/19 and written by Blanka Lipinska who apparently worked as a therapist-hypnotist prior to becoming an author. According to Wikipedia, Blanka also has a degree in cosmetology and enjoys fitness and sailing.
Anyway, it’s basically even glossier looking than Fifty Shades of Grey with more sex and violence but less chemistry within the central relationship featuring two attractive people in their first lead roles.
Italian actor, model and singer Michele Morrone plays Sicilian gangster and playboy Don Massimo Torricelli. When we meet Don he is with his father in the middle of a business negotiation but is suddenly distracted by the sight of a beautiful woman on a nearby beach.
His father is murdered and Don is wounded, but he survives to become the new boss of the family’s criminal business. Five years later Don is enjoying the high-life and is used to getting what he wants, including sex on tap.
But he is actually a bit of a sensitive soul, despite the physical and emotional abuse he hands out, and yearns for the woman on the beach, a painting of whom has pride of place in his mansion home.
Incredibly, one night he spies her at a swanky resort. Polish executive Laura Biel (Anna-Maria Sieklucka) is in a one-way relationship with a cheating boyfriend and looks exactly like Don’s mystery girl.
Don does what any self-respecting gangster would do and kidnaps her. But you see, a bit like Beauty and the Beast, he’s actually giving her an opportunity to fall in love with him. After 365 days if that doesn’t happen, she is free to go.
Wow, what an offer.
The film attempts to navigate around its mysoginist core by presenting Laura as fiesty and overtly sexual herself. So the next hour or so involves the two of them engaging in various forms of aggressive foreplay before acting out the Karma Sutra on his huge yacht.
The film ends on a cliffhanger and, judging by its apparent popularity/notoriety, at least one sequel is likely to follow.
It’s stupid and ridiculous and no doubt offensive to some. But, like the glossiest of trash, it does have a strange appeal.