An Artist Loses and Finds Herself in Quest for Validation
Danish documanterian Lea Glob follows French painter Apolonia Sokol for 13 years.
Recently graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Paris, French painter Apolonia Sokol heads to the U.S.
While there, a wealthy collector commissions 10 canvases a month. It’s an industrial approach to art that docmaker Lea Glob views skeptically: “Why only buy the art when it’s so much cheaper to buy the artist?” she asks.
In a less cynical way, however, Glob’s compelling new film “Apolonia, Apolonia” focuses on Sokol herself, making the artist a living installation that Glob’s camera intimately observes over the course of 13 years.
Sokol’s paintings, slightly large-scale portraits of human subjects in eerie states of repose, are striking, but never quite as intriguing as their restless creator.
While she completes her studies in the contrastingly posh Beaux-Arts, Sokol turns the theater into a makeshift hostel and community hub for friends, fellow artists and adrift activists.
One of them is asylum-seeking Ukrainian feminist Oksana Shachko, becomes the closest friends with the polysexual Sokol, their relationship giving this sprawling film another significant dimension.
Sokol’s art thrives off the diversity and energy of her highly sociable home life; when the theater is repossessed and she’s forced to share small apartment with her mother and Oksana.
She graduates and is stung by her professors’ remarks that her paintings are less interesting than her personality.
