From Omeleto.
A young woman tries to model.
BEHIND THE POSE is used with permission from Sally Lomidze. Learn more at https://sallylomidze.com.
Masha is a young woman on her own in a city far from home. Brought over to the U.S. by a woman named Katerina, Masha aspires to be a model, and now lives in an apartment she shares with other young women with the same dream. But Masha’s reality is far from glamorous, with Katerina proving to be a terrifying and controlling presence pushing the young women to succeed and recoup her investment.
Masha’s place is tenuous, but when she cajoles a photographer named Freddy to help her shoot some new photos, she believes she’s found a friend and ally, as well as the key to success. But even those hopes and trust prove to be an illusion, as Masha discovers what she needs to do to achieve success.
Directed and written by Sally Lomidze, this absorbing, sensitive short drama is a quietly devastating portrait of ambition, exploitation, and the fragile performances women sustain to survive. As an aspiring model, Masha has a desperation to “make it” fueled less by vanity than by fear — fear of being sent back to “the middle of nowhere,” to obscurity and defeat. She will even endure manipulation, control and verbal abuse by Katerina, the minder who ferries the young women bunking in a cheap models’ apartment to and from look-sees and shoots, hoping one of them becomes successful enough to make her some money. Masha is young and alone, with few friends or allies in this lonely world.
With a camera that lingers rather than intrudes, the visuals create a mood of unvarnished intimacy, its texture recalling the softness and delicacy of Sofia Coppola’s early work trafficking in the limbo between youth and experience, though this film’s images are stripped of Coppola’s glamour and privilege. Though the narrative is about people who want to work in fashion, the storytelling is grittier, its light dim, its air heavy with fatigue and yearning. The result is something rawer and more precarious, with storytelling that feels lived-in. It observes the squalor and emotional privation of this space with precision but not voyeurism, and as the narrative unfolds, we become more aware of just how vulnerable Masha is.
But then she gets a break when Freddy show Masha some kindness and friendliness, even advising and coaching her in the often bewildering mores of the world she’s in. Over the course of their impromptu photo shoot, they build a rapport. As Masha, actor Ksena Samborska offers a delicate but dynamic performance, and it’s touching to see her blossom a little and grow in confidence under Freddy’s tutelage. It makes it all the more devastating when that growing trust is betrayed, revealing just how few choices or autonomy Masha has in this world.
By its end, BEHIND THE POSE holds onto its restraint, refusing melodrama and instead quietly portraying Masha’s final test and betrayal without melodrama. What remains is a haunting study of female endurance and the invisible costs of a shimmering dream that curdles into bitter reality, making it a film as delicate as it is unsparing.
