Lea Glob has crafted a career exploring womanhood through documentaries like Olmo & the Seagull and Venus. Now with Apolonia, Apolonia, the Danish director turns her inquisitive lens towards French painter Apolonia Sokol. Filmed over 13 years, Glob’s latest intimately captures Sokol’s restless creative spirit as she chases inspiration from Parisian galleries to the streets of Los Angeles.
We first meet the striking Apolonia on the cusp of her 26th birthday back in 2013. Already, she commands attention like a stage actor, her expressive eyes and mischievous grin belying a deeper complexity. As the daughter of theater performers raised in an underground Parisian stage, she seems destined for the limelight.
Yet who is the real Apolonia? Her outward magnetism initially draws Glob in to document the young artist’s path. As the years unfold, a deeper relationship develops between documentarian and muse. Milestones are marked, cherished communities leave indelible impressions, kilometrics are logged pursuing critical acclaim abroad. Throughout the joys and heartbreaks, Glob remains faithfully by Apolonia’s side.
What emerges is a meditative chronicle that doubles as a mirror reflecting two women united by the allure of creation. For over a decade, Glob tracks Apolonia’s struggles to reconcile artistic passion with commercial sustainability and societal expectations of working mothers. The film speaks to larger contemporary identity questions through its intimate portrait of a restless painter chasing inspiration across continents. Buckle up for a decade-spanning ride alongside a singular spirit.
Theater in Her Blood
Apolonia enters the world through theater—literally. The daughter of actor parents, she spends her first years roaming the underground Paris performance space they founded. Surrounded by artists and dreamers from day one, creativity and community shape Apolonia as much as any school lessons.
She officially trains at the revered École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, honing classical techniques from respected professors. In stark contrast to the avant-garde productions back home, the rigid institution leaves her cold. She graduates yet feels unfulfilled, carrying an underground spirit her professors fail to grasp.
Returning to her theatrical roots, Apolonia transforms the family’s struggling venue into a communal hub for fellow working artists. She moves in herself and invites creative friends to stay in makeshift rooms. A photographer here, a costume designer there–the space becomes a support system for independent talents chasing their passions against tough odds. They work collaboratively, barter services, share meals cooked in a cramped kitchen–a sort of artistic commune realizing strengths through unity.
Among the rotating cast of characters is Ukrainian provocateur Oksana Shachko. She encourages Apolonia to embark on a deeply personal painting series exploring her family’s forced Siberian exile under Stalin. Moving fluidly between mediums, Apolonia’s large-scale oil portraits depict friends in almost paranormal tranquility. She aims to attract commercial success without compromising her unconventional perspective shaped by formative years roaming her parents’ bohemian theater.
Just as key creative relationships blossom, capitalist forces threaten Apolonia’s artistic incubator. Unable to single-handedly sustain the beloved theater financially, she watches her communal home disappear down a bank’s unforgiving balance sheets. Forced into a tiny apartment with mom and Oksana, Apolonia’s lost stability mirrors her creative uncertainty.
Onward she must march towards an undefined future where dogged perseverance is the only given. Having witnessed the uncompromising high-wire act of maintaining artistic authenticity and sustainable success firsthand from her parents, Apolonia strikes out to shape her own path one brushstroke at a time.
An Artist Finds Her Muse
Glob first glimpses Apolonia’s magnetic pull at a 2009 party. Enchanted by her commanding presence, Glob decides then and there to feature the young muse in a future project. By 2013, Glob formally picks up a camera to trail the French painter for a school assignment that she has no plans to ever put down.
Just as her career takes off, Glob discovers her directorial soulmate in the striking chanteuse speeding towards uncertainty. Perhaps she recognizes parts of herself in this bohemian daughter of performers reconciling creativity’s spiritual nourishment with pragmatism’s financial burdens.
Glob returns to familiar thematic territory as Apolonia wrestles with establishing an artistic identity amidst indifference and doubt. Parallels emerge between the fictional actresses of earlier Glob films exploring womanhood’s tangled complexities. Here the struggles play out in vivid vérité across years in the life of a real-world painter chasing inspiration from Paris to Los Angeles.
The camera becomes Glob’s passport into Apolonia’s whirlwind life pursued by passion and community one minute, harsh realities of rent due the next. Splitting time between painting personal projects and waiting tables to pay bills, Apolonia vies to find harmony between artistic ideals and commercial sustainability.
Meanwhile, we witness Glob growing equally devoted to documenting Apolonia’s path over the decade-plus odyssey. The pair strike a balance between subject and documentarian, muse and maestro, kindred spirits bonded by the shared highs and lows of chasing creative callings. Through parallel lenses, two determined women help each other bring different artistic visions into clearer focus.
Sisters in Art and Adversity
Out of the revolving cast that rolls through Apolonia’s communal theater over the years, one kindred spirit emerges—Ukrainian firebrand Oksana Shachko. What begins as a temporary asylum arrangement blossoms into an profoundly formative sisterhood spanning years and kilometers.
As Apolonia loses her physical creative hive when the bank reclaims the theater, her home’s spirit lives on through Oksana’s encouragement. Their bond pushes Apolonia to embark on a deeply personal matrilineal painting series exploring her ancestry’s forced Siberian exile under Stalin. Through late night conversations and tough-love critiques, Oksana nurtures Apolonia’s technical growth while bolstering her confidence to explore risky creative territory.
In return, Apolonia supports Oksana through bouts of depression and creative uncertainty. When Oksana gets rejected from a local art program, Apolonia convinces her to apply to a more experimental Berlin academy instead. The pair pledge to remain untethered by societal expectations of marriage and motherhood in dogged pursuit of their craft.
Yet Oksana’s volatile highs and lows continue despite Apolonia’s support. The same nonconformist spark that fuels Oksana’s provocative public art exposes her vulnerability to relentless critique from traditionalists. Camera in tow, Glob captures Apolonia struggling to help Oksana battle inner demons one installation protest at a time.
Through the kindred friends’ hardships, Glob reflects on society’s disproportionate criticism towards outspoken female artists. Where Oksana’s mental health suffers under constant public scrutiny, Apolonia battles the inner turmoil of creating commercially or following her artistic muse. Across years and countries, external pressures mount yet the pair persevere thanks to an unshakeable bond nurtured over nights sharing cigarettes and dreams under the theater’s dimmed spotlights.
Sisters in spirit and outlook, Apolonia and Oksana cling to shared hopes of one day reaching artist havens like New York City. But when they finally touch down stateside years later, is the reality worth the fantasy?
Temptation in the City of Angels
Apolonia lands stateside still chasing the artistic recognition that eluded her in Europe. What she discovers is a capitalist machine hungry to exploit latest trends regardless of collateral damage. Yet with dollar signs dancing in her imagination, she makes a fateful deal with one of the art world’s most notorious sharks.
The New York streets fail to pave gold for Apolonia’s paintings, just more unaffordable struggle. So the wandering painter trades the Brooklyn grind for the siren call of Los Angeles next. A chance encounter introduces her to ultra-wealthy collector Stefan Simchowitz, he of the ominous “patron Satan” reputation according to The New York Times.
Seduced by his promises of a studio, financial security, and access to his elite client roster, Apolonia signs a pact with the meteoric dealer some might liken to selling her soul. The initial months tick by in a dreamy montage as Simchowitz wines, dines, and bursts with praise over Apolonia’s otherworldly talents. Enthralled by intoxicating words and cushioned lifestyle, she produces her fastest work yet.
But when the first commissions trickle in from entranced buyers, Stefan’s tune pivots. No longer satisfied as a passive collector, he assumes the role of manager, promptly demanding ten new pieces a month from his rising star. Apolonia happily obliges at first, energized by a steady paycheck and the ego boost of flourishing sales.
Yet producing on command slowly dulls her creative edge as art becomes output and galleries turn to factories. As Stefan pockets lucrative profits, cracks expose in his promises to nurture Apolonia’s idiosyncratic talent. Their relationship frays as his focus drifts towards the next young apprentice eager to sign a check-cashing contract.
Apolonia emerges creatively depleted and financially beholden to Stefan’s ruthless agenda. His seductive overtures that once stroked her artistic spirit have manipulated her gifts for his own commercial interests. Ultimately feeling exploited, Apolonia makes an impassioned return to Europe, seeking the inspiration that still eludes her.
With a cautious eye observing this Faustian ordeal from start to bitter finish, Glob underscores how capitalist gatekeepers like Simchowitz view artists like Apolonia as little more than commodities to squeeze for profit.
When Life Imitates Art
Just as Apolonia continues wandering years into her quest for purpose, the documentary takes an intimate turn towards its maker’s own struggles. Right when Glob seems to capture her subject clearly in frame, a difficult pregnancy abruptly shifts the focus inward.
As if in karmic dialogue with earlier works analyzing womanhood’s biological burdens, the artist turned documentarian suddenly faces her own crossroads between creation and procreation. Bedridden throughout her expecting months, Glob falls unconscious for a period after enduring grave medical complications from a high-risk delivery.
Awaking finally from the dramatic scare, Glob briefly pivots to documenting her own tenuous recovery. In raw diary-style scenes exposing profound vulnerability, she processes this violent brush with mortality. Candid voiceover narration reveals Glob grappling to reconcile newfound maternal duty with long-held creative passions.
Echoing her weary friend Apolonia chased by restless inspiration across years and continents, Glob too finds herself at philosophical odds. She contemplates whether almost dying delivering new life constitutes some cosmic turning point. While beholden to the camera’s gaze chasing Apolonia’s next adventure, did Glob fail to pause and plan for posterity herself?
Resonant parallels between women divided by a lens yet united by fate’s cruel unpredictability come into sharp focus following the pregnancy. Helming an intimate chronicle about her friend’s perpetual self-doubt, Glob doesn’t realize that she harbors equally intense insecurities. Only through emergency does Glob gain courage to exhibit her own emotional wounds so candidly beside Apolonia’s. =
Two voyages following fluctuating creative muses suddenly overlap into one shared path. Of all the expose’s vulnerable late scenes bearing Glob’s soul, watching Apolonia gently console her worn documentarian friend lays bare this companion chronicle’s beating heart.
Behind the Lens: Crafting an Intimate Epic
Glob abandons detached objectivity for an affectionate observational approach that remains remarkably consistent across the decades-spanning chronicle. Committed to revealing quiet truths through patient accumulation of revealing moments, she privileges intimacy over impartiality. From the first party scene showcasing Sokol’s magnetic charm through the final somber reflections, Glob’s adoring lens betrays profound admiration for her ambitious muse unhardened by hardship.
Equally game for the candid close-up is Sokol, whose comfort inside the frame dominates scenes. Her background as a second-generation theater kid shines through various stages of self-presentation to the viewing voyeurs. Unafraid of the camera’s gaze she acts less like subject than costar in an emotional epic positioning the audience as confidants following her path to clarity.
As Sokol grows more self-assured in projecting her preferred image, Glob’s dependence on explanatory narration lessens proportionally. The film shifts emphasis from dispensing biographical context to philosophical rumination. Voiceover commentary evolves from plot recap to conceptual framing of broader themes related to womanhood and artistic purpose.
Paradoxically, the passage of time marked within the diegesis draws documentarian and documentee closer. As the term of Glob’s project extends indefinitely to keep pace with Sokol’s unpredictable trajectory, rigid divisions between filmmaker and subject dissolve. Breaking temporal confines of a traditional decade documentary, Glob commits to trailing Sokol into the unknown future indefinitely however narrative threads wander.
Closing Thoughts: Enduring Creative Visions
Glob’s compelling time capsule resists conclusion, instead pausing Apolonia’s vivid journey as it still has far to voyage. There is no tidy wrapping of loose ends, just loyal documentation that life’s ephemeral magic flows ever-onward even after the credits conclude. The defiance of firm takeaways mirrors the fighting spirit of the real women defiantly pursuing unseen dreams beyond the run time. What we gain is art’s defiant stance against life’s rushed commodification.
Through one artist’s defiant days, the expose counters capitalism’s corrosion of creative vocations into disposable products. Sokol rejects rigid career ladders and outdated societal timelines to pursue an elusive muse across years. Her flame remains guided not by profit, but an urge to capture ephemeral emotional moments before they fade from memory.
Equally prominent is Glob’s use of Apolonia’s struggles to reflect on female identity and independence broadly. Polarizing themes related to mental health, sexuality, motherhood and femininity permeate scenes framed within a progressive perspective. Glob argues rigid sociocultural expectations that devalue women’s professional dedication remain firmly institutionalized.
A profound sense perseverance despite uncertainty emerges. No guarantees of fame or tranquility wait down roads less traveled for creatives like Sokol. Yet she presses forward, emboldened by past mentors urging her to evolve through dogged dedication to developing a mature artistic vision regardless of external validation. That tireless chase for self-actualization through art remains this singular chronicle’s central takeaway.
As the density of Glob’s thirteen-year character study reveals, some journeys avoid neat summaries. But the shimmering soul birthed during extended vulnerable exchange proves art’s special capacity to resonate long after the director yells cut.
The Review
Apolonia, Apolonia
Spanning years rich with artistic peaks and personal valleys, Glob’s intrepid portrait vividly captures creative spirits as they evolve through toil towards momentary transcendence. A palpable authenticity flows through unguarded moments reflecting time’s inevitable reshaping of priorities. Remaining productively unsatisfied through late nights fueled by passion’s flickering flame emerges as the victorious takeaway from this inspiring decade-plus descent into the hearts of women impelled to create.
PROS
- Intimate look at an artist's evolution over 13 years
- Glob's affectionate and patient documentary approach
- Thematically rich, exploring female identity and perseverance
- Strong emotional core in Apolonia and Oksana's friendship
- Vulnerable moments as focus shifts to Glob's pregnancy
CONS
- Narratively unwieldy, lacking neat conclusions
- Could be seen as overindulgent in later stages
- Assumes familiarity with obscure art world figures
- Loose structure demands patient viewing
