Maria (Grazyna Misiorowska) a woman turning 50 and entering menopause with a jolt is the titular character and the title also serves as a reference to her obsession with collecting Virgin Mary statues as she is also a virgin. She has never really had any interest in sex until her doctor prescribes hormone therapy patches that she applies incorrectly. The result, side effects that include hallucinations, a hellacious libido, exploring her urges alone in her apartment and seeing sexual encounters everywhere.
Older females are not often protagonists in cinema. Decision makers male directors, studio executives, and producers have been more comfortable with films and topics that speak to them with the female lead normally occupying the second or third position on the playbill. With Marygoround director, Daria Woszek wanted to tackle this unspoken subject matter. It's a time when women are seen to have lost their function. Often viewed as lesser than, and likely no longer have and children at home. Woszek wants to show that the opposite is true. Without the responsibility of child rearing new experiences become available experiencing new pursuits or revisiting ones long since abandoned.
Maria gets up to some wild pursuits as the film progresses often with her niece Helena (Helena Sujecka) her defacto roommate by her side. At work in the grocery store, her colleagues talk openly about sex as do the customers many in pursuit of her manager Bogdan (Janusz Chabior) who she admires from afar or fulled by her young sexually liberated co-worker. She takes an interest in a fashion store clerk (Pawel Smagala) who likes to get into women's private space and give them designer scarves as gifts. This infatuation turns into a dinner date that leads to the most bonkers scene in the film, the longest and perhaps the most chaotic scene on film this year. There's courtship, a mischievous game, violence, destruction, and extremely poor table manner on display as drinking classes are constantly filled in a manic manner.
Marygoround explores a subject matter often ignored as half of the population does not experience, understand, nor do they want to. That half also tend to be the ones that green light and finance films. Grazyna Misiorowska gives a fully committed performance as Mary participates in on screen activities normally the territory of female performers half her age. It's a feast of religious symbolism and imagery mixed in with lust and experimentation. No matter where you are at in life the opportunity to shape the future remains wide open
**** Out of 4.
Marygoround | Daria Woszek | Poland | 2020 | 80 Minutes.
Tags: Menopause, Grocery Clerk, Female Hormones, Hallucinations, Virgin Mary, Dinner Party, Cannoli, Wine, Cigarettes, Perfume.
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