Beautiful Bodybuilding Drama Gentle Stylishly Interrogates the Superficial
A calculated love story told through reps and calories, the Hungarian Gentle flexes all the right muscles. Writer/directors Anna Eszter Nemes and Laszlo Csuja have found two stunning non-professional actors, injecting their enhancing performances into their beefy tale of bodybuilding obsession, romance and (un)fulfillment. Well-defined and stylishly posed, Gentle has a big heart beneath the bulk.
Edina (Eszter Csonka) is a rising champ in the bodybuilding world. Under the exacting eye of her professional and romantic partner Adam (Gyorgy Turos), she’s qualifying for bigger and better tournaments, evening out her Herculean proportions, and linking her poses together with fluid grace. A stunning opening long take is as unable to look away from Edina as her spectators, twirling around her as she does the same for the judges. Csonka immediately proves herself an engaging actor, compelling in performance mode and with butterflies in her washboard stomach, especially shining when she makes that magical leap from artist to artform when striking a pose.
Gentle doesn’t shy away from the ironically self-destructive facets of the by-definition constructive pursuit. It’s brutally explicit about the body horror of bodybuilding. Needles into engorged veins, faces beaten by dehydration and exhaustion, hearts pushed to the brink. Edina is the meat, the art, the display. But she is also the one doing the push-ups, the squats, the hours on the exercise bike. It’s grueling and unforgiving, both in the moment and with its results: Not only is Edina’s physique really only appreciated under competition conditions, it’s Adam who gets all the attention from the superfans, both as a man and as a former champ himself. Turos is just as fantastic as his foil, resigned and hopeful and loving behind stoic eyes that once knew the spotlight.
Both performers undergo a shift when faced with the financial reality of getting Edina to the next step in her competitive journey. Affording an expensive cocktail of supplements, lean meats and chemicals—not to mention plane tickets, entry fees, gym memberships—is an expensive ask, especially without a sponsor or patron. Adam tries to get extra work as a Magic Mike-like dancer, but can’t bring himself to (or, as we see Edina stretching him earlier in the film, perhaps simply can’t) perform. So it’s up to Edina. She’ll do it all. Through a contact hanging around the backrooms of the bodybuilding world, she finds her way into specialty sex work, where the superficial links of showmanship and physicality give way to more intimate satisfactions, making the most of her unique build.
She starts simple. She’ll just do what she does on stage: Strike her mandatory poses, tighten her muscle groups in turn, and allow people to fetishize her body. But, like bodybuilding, this gives way to more nuanced pleasures. Not all clients simply want to jerk off as they feel her flex, excited by her extreme body. As she meets one in particular who’s harmlessness disarms her, Gentle goes beneath the tanned pectorals to find themes of denial and desire, of small pleasures and taboos—of seeking relief from the confines of an established and expected routine in harmless, unassuming ways: A nibbled energy bar, a feminine gown, a head in a lap. Edina can be appreciated here for more than her body, a note underscored by a particular John’s penchant for blindfolds.