Sweat

Just as Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade was a turn­ing point for social media on the big screen, Sweat cap­tures the nuances of influ­encer cul­ture unlike any film before. Com­men­tary on the dig­i­tal social space is pre­dom­i­nant­ly reserved for comedic par­o­dy or a cyn­i­cal analy­sis of its detri­men­tal effects. This, how­ev­er, is an intense por­trait of three days in the life of a Pol­ish Insta­gram fit­ness influ­encer and a thought­ful­ly sin­cere delib­er­a­tion of the mod­ern celebrity.

We meet Syl­wia Zając (Mag­dale­na Koleśnik) in a War­saw shop­ping cen­tre, the cam­era bounc­ing to keep up with the ener­getic pace of the work­out class she’s con­duct­ing. With a beam­ing white smile, per­fect­ly tamed pony­tail, and pep­py per­sona, she is algo­rith­mi­cal­ly perfect.

Though her viral­i­ty comes when a post of her tear­ful­ly detail­ing that 600,000 Insta­gram fol­low­ers doesn’t negate how vehe­ment­ly lone­ly she is gar­ners atten­tion. But with a nation­al TV appear­ance com­ing up, Syl­wia is more con­cerned with the inva­sive­ness of mali­cious gos­sip sites and how ter­ri­fy­ing­ly close her obsessed stalk­er is getting.

Adding to his grow­ing fil­mog­ra­phy of time­ly social­ly reac­tive films, Sweat is writer/​director Mag­nus von Horn’s char­ac­ter study of a woman craft­ing her own per­son­al pro­file. He is quick to break through the glossy pink exte­ri­or of Sylwia’s social media-fil­tered life, how­ev­er, more con­cerned with her time in-between Insta­gram Sto­ries than Sylwia’s posts themselves.

In explor­ing Sylwia’s offline life, her per­fect image begins to frac­ture. Inter­ac­tions with fit­ness part­ner Klaudiusz (Julian Świeżews­ki) and her moth­er (Alek­san­dra Koniecz­na) play out with a strik­ing­ly trag­ic hol­low­ness. Such is exem­pli­fied in a dark­ly fun­ny sequence where her mother’s birth­day meal some­how becomes a show­case for Sylwia’s new work­out DVD.

In its most pen­sive scenes, how­ev­er, Sweat lingers with Syl­wia alone in the dark­ness of her flat where screen glare illu­mi­nates her face like an arti­fi­cial spot­light. Von Horn’s cam­era, like Sylwia’s phone, rarely leaves her side. This inti­ma­cy is entire­ly indebt­ed to Koleśnik’s qui­et­ly pow­er­ful, phys­i­cal­ly intu­itive per­for­mance. And not only with regards to her fit­ness career: when Syl­wia clos­es the app her smile fades and her body relax­es, a mark of the per­for­ma­tiv­i­ty that sep­a­rates her dig­i­tal and real self.

Sweat lurch­es into an unex­pect­ed­ly vio­lent and dra­mat­ic final act, soothed by edi­tor Agniesz­ka Glinska’s sparse cuts and longer sequences which allow Koleśnik to dri­ve home her tour de force lead turn. It is the con­tra­dic­tion of mak­ing an unhur­ried, cin­e­mat­ic film cen­tred on the chaot­ic expe­ri­ence of exist­ing in a dig­i­tal world that makes von Horn’s film a dis­tinct­ly com­pelling watch.