Gentle is as sinewy, muscular, flab-free as its protagonist

Anna Eszter Nemes and László Csuja’s’s Hungarian gem Gentle is very difficult to describe. If I say it is about a female body builder and her trainer you would immediately think of Million Dollar Baby or nearer home, Mary Kom.

If I say it is about body-gaming, a very different pursuit from body shaming wherein a woman or a man exists only for the muscles that she or he builds with the diligence of a flyover built over a city filled with hopes and dreams. It would still not do justice to how much emotional impact Gentle achieves in how little time and space.

We are immediately introduced to Edina (played by real-life body builder Eszter Csonka) and her life partner Ádám (György Turós). Without wasting a single moment we can see how devoted they are to one another, or rather how committed he is to taking her to world championship, although the times are tough and the income is increasingly low.

Supplements in this taut and lean drama on muscle building mean something else. Adam must try his luck as a pole dancer. He fails.

Edina has more success as an escort. Hiding a cheat meal from the hawk-eyed Adam she pretends to be gone on a night-out with her gal pals and sneaks off to hotel for a kinky tryst with a male client who wants her to pose and show off her booty. It is not clear whether they have sex. It doesn’t matter; a cheat meal is a cheat meal, a cheat male is a cheat male.

Gentle is a harsh despondent film filled with an spoken sadness and a constant grief. Edina barely smiles even when someone compliments her, she is not sure if the praise comes with a price.Edina’s sadness pervades the film like toxic fumes. She is unhappy with her championship chores but goes along for her partner’s sake.

She then meets the suave Krisztián (Csaba Krisztik) who loosens up Edina’s muscles. The taut is taught how to be a tot once again. The two smile, giggle, play childish games like hide ‘n’ seek, behave like two children liberated from the crèche. These are fleeting moments of pleasure snatched away swiftly, cruelly.Edina is humiliated out of the clandestine relationship.

Whether flexing her muscles on stage or unleashing the child within her in the bedroom, humiliation seems to be Edina’s only option.

And then Edina is back being human meat. A mound of melodrama is insinuated into the plot when Edina’s doctor informs her that all the body-building will kill her in no time. Like Rocky (though far more articulate than he,probably because she hardly speaks) Edina plods along on her agony-path, determined to not disappoint Adam, having disappointed herself completely.

Gentle is a flab-free no-nonsense brutally unsentimental look at the darkness behind the harsh glare of the arc lights. Sometimes what glitters is not gold. Just cold.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out.

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