There are so many borders and boundaries in our lives, both physical and psychological. Navigating them is always tricky, and there’s always a question of just how necessary many of these boundaries are. In the 2016 film A Decent Woman, directed by Lukas Valenta Rinner and written by Rinner, Ana Godoy, Ariel Gurevich, and Martin Shanley, a woman discovers a new life for herself as she crosses physical and personal borders herself, with some unusual results.
Thirty two year old Belén gets a job as a maid in a fancy, gated community outside of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The woman who owns the home she’s hired to clean follows her around, nitpicking as she works. The woman’s athletic son mostly ignores her. While trimming the hedges outside, Belen discovers something that will change her life: a nudist resort lies next door!
The film solely follows Iride Mockert as Belén, who seems largely unaffected by her surroundings. It’s clear she needs this maid job, but there’s no explanation as to how she landed here and no emotion in her. Even as she goes out on a carnival date with the neighborhood’s gatekeeper, she seems like she’s somewhere else. She seems to be humoring him more than anything, there’s no chemistry between the two even when they go to a love hotel together. When she finally works up the courage to enter the nudist resort, it’s peaceful and idyllic in a way that the gated neighborhood is not. Belén finally undresses and joins the community there at the film’s halfway mark, where she is welcomed with open arms. It’s here that we see her openly smile for the first time.
At first, it feels like this may not be the community for her either: the members here are certainly nudists, but they are openly sexual swingers, holding tantric sex lessons and erotic poetry sessions outdoors, with Belén later running across a man masturbating alone. Definitely not what real naturist clubs are like and more of what outside people suspect goes on, which made me feel a little uneasy. Despite the discomfort this initially causes in her, she returns whenever the family she works for goes off on an athletic trip. We see her truly happy here, and she becomes more and more distant from those on the other side of the fence.
There’s obviously a stark contrast between the two communities, with the electrified fence that stands between them being uniquely emphasized and made into a plot point. The gated community itself already stands in contrast from its surroundings, especially when we see Belén walking through poorer neighborhoods, while the nudist resort is shown as a true paradise. There is the old, false statement that nudity is a great equalizer, but that very much seems to be the case in the community here, with boundaries between its members dissipating. The scenes here are so quiet and serene, despite complaints of noise from the gated community. We see young and old bodies of different shapes, sizes, and color, all sharing the space together happily. The sex stuff is a little weird, sure, but it’s all consensual, it’s far from the only thing the community here does, and it truly feels like Belén has found her place. It’s hard not to feel good for her, and it’s a perfect escape from the doting socialite Diana and her angry son. There is an emptiness in the gated community, no connection between anyone, whereas in the nudist resort everyone is connected and close with each other regardless of physical differences.
The problem lies in the movie’s finale: tragedy strikes, and things turn violent between the two communities quite suddenly. It feels out of nowhere. It doesn’t quite work, as it’s so tonally different from the rest of the movie. The satirical elements and darker humor are there from the beginning, sure, along with foreshadowing from the hunter who is always out shooting the nearby parrots, but I don’t think it’s enough to pull that big swing off, and the actual ending itself doesn’t hit the mark either, feeling inconclusive. It feels like a different movie got tacked on at the end. I understand this movie had a fairly small budget, and maybe that meant a lot had to be cut or simply couldn’t be filmed due to different constraints, but it’s hard to ignore the jarring effect it has. I have to say that this swerve does make it interesting and keeps it from entirely following the bog standard nudist movie formula of “outsider discovers and falls in love with nudism,” as well as making it yet another example of nudist fiction that gets really weird with things.
Despite that, the film is absolutely still worth watching. The filmmaking is subtle and simple, with typically very little camera movement, long takes, and music used sparingly. All of the nudist resort scenes are gorgeous, with painterly compositions adding a dreamy quality to the movie, and the chill vibes there remind me of Doris Wishman’s own nudist films. The sexuality on display is all shot tastefully, on top of being brief when shown. The movie is available to stream on Kanopy under its original Spanish title of Los Decentes, and can be rented on Prime Video as well. Kanopy’s subtitles have some misspellings and issues, but nothing that could truly disrupt the viewing experience. 🪐
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Agreed, the movie is interesting but completely falls apart in the last 20 minutes. It also may be my failing, or perhaps some confusion arising from it being a German/Argentinian co-production, but throughout the object of the satire was never entirely clear (This may be a thing with German co-productions, see Star Maidens). The people in the gated community were depicted as overworked cogs with bourgeois wealth, but the people in the nudist community seemed to be equally, if not even more, wealthy. But with no obvious means of income other than property. Yet they are clearly the sympathetic ones in the movie. I came away from it feeling I had just watched a full-blown Marxist defense of aristocracy. I’m not entirely sure that’s what the movie meant, but I’m not entirely not sure either.
Thanks for the recommendation!