☛ Cette critique est aussi disponible en français [➦].

Translated by Gabrielle Baillargeon-Michaud. 

As she prepares to graduate from the University of Warsaw, Natalia, a computer programming prodigy, decides to dive headfirst into a rather crazy project: developing an application that helps women achieve orgasm, a state she has never experienced herself. To accomplish this, she surrounds herself with Paulina, a devout Catholic dissatisfied with her sex life, and Monika, a young heiress who has multiple sexual partners but always pretends to orgasm. Co-written and co-directed by Kalina Alabrudzińska and Piotr Domalewski, Sexify is the rather engaging story of three young women in search of pleasure, certainly, but especially in search of desire. For what they must discover to answer the question that drives them first concerns this resolutely intimate and political thing—too often restricted by dominant imaginations—which is desire.

“Either popular culture distorts the female orgasm, or it simply ignores it.”

Throughout the eight episodes of the series, we witness the trio’s multiple experiments: exhibitions, visits to sex shops, courses on vaginal breathing, and more. Their efforts culminate with the creation of the “copulatorium,” a laboratory resembling that of Masters and Johnson¹ where couples are invited to pleasure each other for research purposes. While the series’ final message is a powerful invitation to the liberation of female pleasure—and to the deconstruction of the imaginations restricting female erogenous zones to the simple duo of clitoris and vagina, with the most important erogenous zone being the brain—we must first endure the omnipresence of the phallic figure and sexuality centred around the act of penetration. In this regard, Sexify remains a representation of sexuality still sadly close to reality. It’s also a bit unfortunate that Natalia’s character is designated as “virgin” and, consequently, incapable of pleasure: a rather reductive description, far from reality.

Despite everything, along the way, we witness the construction of powerful female friendships, the encounter with male characters breaking away from norms, and Paulina’s emancipation, who, without renouncing her Catholic faith, allows herself to discover herself as a desiring subject. In this, Sexify stands out, as Poland is a country where LGBTQ+ ideology-free zones are emerging², and where the right to abortion is almost nonexistent³. All in all, Sexify is a fun, unpretentious, and quite educational series. Without being revolutionary, it is a step in the right direction, and its central subject, female pleasure outside the male gaze, was well-awaited within popular culture.

¹ William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson are known for conducting research on sexual physiological responses and the treatment of sexual dysfunctions in the second half of the 20th century. Their research, based on direct observation, was considered taboo at the turn of the 1960s.

² Baudot, J.R. & Ory, I. (2021, March 10). En Pologne, des « zones libres d’idéologies LGBTQ+ » inquiètent l’Union européenne. Europe 1.

³ Sénécal, P. (2021, January 28). La quasi-interdiction de l’avortement a force de loi en Pologne, Le Devoir.

Reference :

Director/creator : Kalina Alabrudzińska; Piotr Domalewski
Title : Sexify
Release Date : 2021

This TV serie is available on Netflix.