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Review

LADY LOVE. In the film, the images are the most arousing

Lady Love, despite a somewhat clunky finale and a few narrative shortcuts, remains one of the best-produced Polish series of the 21st century.

Odys Korczyński

22 January 2025

lady love

I’m glad that more and more creators in Poland are starting to realize that a film or series is not like a book, where the viewer’s imagination has to do all the visual work to create their interpretation of the written world. It’s not enough to just grab a camera, hand actors a script, shoot a few scenes, edit the footage carelessly, and hope for success, relying on critics to be dazzled by a unique form and overinterpret artistry through elements like social pathologies, overly realistic content, minimalistic set design, or aesthetic and musical abstraction—things that often masquerade as high art. The single and only season of the series Lady Love has come to an end, fortunately leaving a completely different impression. Bartosz Konopka once again proves that he doesn’t shy away from details. He pays attention to the intricacy and mysticism of the presented world. Yes, mysticism—because Lady Love, though ostensibly an ordinary drama about a fellow countrywoman of mine, a seemingly insignificant girl from a small town who became a legend of pornography, is in fact an aestheticized portrayal of a journey that Lucyna Lis literally paid for with her blood as she tried to escape poverty and make something of herself as a woman. The cost of this journey in her life, however, should be considered a marketing failure.

I feared that Teresa Orlowski’s story would be formulaic—either a glowing tribute to a poor woman exploited by the porn industry, or a merciless critique of her as an immoral, fallen figure whom self-righteous haters secretly, as often happens, fantasize about. If I had to openly rank her on my personal ladder of porn values, Teresa—or Lucyna, aka Lady Love—would lose many positions to, say, Nina Hartley. But that’s just a matter of taste and not a judgment of her as a person or her specific life choices. Considering those choices, Lady Love, thanks to the strong script by Ewa Popiołek and Dorota Jankojć-Poddębiak, positions itself somewhere between the simplistic moral poles of complete disdain for pornography and making Teresa a martyr. The series does not romanticize the porn industry, instead exposing the deep corruption within that environment—and I’m not referring here to sexual libertinism. However, it also does not turn the producers of porn or pornography itself into demons or devils that must be eradicated from society at all costs. One might say that the choice is left to the viewers, just as, in some sense, the choice belonged to Lucyna when she decided to move to Germany to work in pornography. What the series does provide viewers, though, is a vivid opportunity to enter this world of the 1980s—a time drenched in freedoms that Poles in those days could only dream of, including sexual freedom. This freedom, however, was dangerous for men and their communist rulers, as well as for the clergy, who were also vying for power. A woman, therefore, could not be liberated; she had to serve, much like a nun—which Lucyna Lis had once wanted to become, only to discover that one of the older sisters wanted to create her own convent-based lesbian pornography.

lady love

One might call it the irony of fate, which significantly shaped the life of Lady Love’s protagonist but also made her life incredibly colorful—literally. This colorfulness plays a huge role in the aesthetic of Lady Love. It serves as the only conceivable alternative to the grayness of Poland, an attempt to make it free—even at the cost of squandering the gift of free will. There is no other path than liberation for a person to learn to act righteously. No commandment can make someone good—it can only make them frightened and enslaved. This confrontation with another world, juxtaposing two political and social environments, is key to the atmosphere of Lady Love and is masterfully filmed by Jacek Podgórski, which is no surprise given his previous craftsmanship in works like The Mute (Krew Boga) or Najmro. The narrative device of interrogation moves viewers through the story, revealing the characters’ motivations, who don’t simply confess their intentions to investigator Kamiński but instead twist events—and are twisted by them. This interplay is delightful to watch, smooth and intuitive, without jarring moments, while appreciating the excellent editing and music that perfectly underscores the emotions in each scene. And the actors are clearly audible, even when speaking quickly—a pleasant surprise, especially after viewing something like Hound’s Hill. In fact, it’s an interesting experiment to watch an episode of that crime drama followed immediately by an episode of Lady Love. Such a sound-based game could certainly be played by Jakub Żulczyk, who might then notice the difference in diction between, for example, Mateusz Kościukiewicz and Borys Szyc—or the charming and convincing Anna Szymańczyk.

This is how you create an atmosphere unique to a story—memorable, framed within craftsmanship that doesn’t have to be embarrassed even beyond that mythical ocean. Lady Love, despite a somewhat clunky finale and a few narrative shortcuts, including the handling of one character’s death, remains one of the best-produced Polish series of the 21st century. Its creators deserve to be showered with awards, and others who still dream of creating grand, artistic cinema of moral unease, with their incessant use of shaky handheld shots, should take note. In cinema, it’s the images that should speak to the viewers—images that, even when paused, continue to captivate the imagination, much like Lucyna Lis, exquisitely brought to life by Anna Szymańczyk.

Odys Korczyński

Odys Korczyński

For years he has been passionate about computer games, in particular RPG productions, film, medicine, religious studies, psychoanalysis, artificial intelligence, physics, bioethics, as well as audiovisual media. He considers the story of a film to be a means and a pretext to talk about human culture in general, whose cinematography is one of many splinters.

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