Directed by: Bogna Kowalczyk
Rating: ★★★★☆
Mission accomplished for Bogna Kowalczyk who returned from Hot Docs in Toronto with an Emerging International Filmmaker Award in her hands. A cinematic portrait of the oldest and most revered cross-dressed in Poland per se is a matter of some delicacy. Andrzej Szwan, aka drag queen Lulla La Polaca, is a gingery octogenarian who, incredibly enough, is always up to something scintillating in his daily life.
Did the Lulla la Polaca welcome Kowalczyk and her crew with open arms and pink faux fur sliders in Szwan’s memory and trinket-filled flat in Warsaw ? Who knows. What is certain is that the age gap between the young documentarist and veteran performer – about 50 years separate the two − does not seem to have affected the trustful relationship they were able to build during the filming of Boylesque.
The best visual introduction to Lulla la Polaca, one of the most iconic figures of the LGBT movement in his country, remains possibly the reportage that appeared in June 2021 on the Polish edition of Vogue. While Kowalczyk’s film shows the drag queen’s journey to Germany and participation to Berlin Pride, the Polish director did not focus on Lulla la Polaca as a flamboyant ambassador of sexual minorities in Poland.
Andrzej-Lulla’s multifaceted persona as a performer either did not make it to the foreground of Boylesque. The Warsaw-born filmmaker was, first and foremost, interested in bringing out Szwan’s humanity on the screen. Andrzej-Lulla’s natural proneness to dispel the fear of dying to better embrace what life brings to everyday, as well as his-her ceaseless and strenuous quest for a soul mate.
Although Kowalczyk did not rely on stock footage in the making of her debut non-fiction feature
length, she sewed up everything with a directorial finesse which evokes the work of British documentarist Asif Kapadia in his trilogy devoted to “outsider’ celebrities. Unlike figures such as Senna, Winehouse and Maradona, Andrzej-Lulla doesn’t seem to have any price to pay for the late fame he-she attained domestically.
After Polanski, Horowitz. The Wizards from the Ghetto (2021), Boylesque is a further confirmation that certain Poles in their 80s are a fantastic topic to explore for documentary filmmakers. Kowalczyk’s film was also warmly received at the Krakow Film Festival.
Film Reviewed by Giuseppe Sedia
Published by Kino Mania on November 25, 2022