Sexuality, Body Politics and Socio-Educational Function of the Cinema in Touch Me Not (Adina Pintilie, 2018)

Abstract

This article analyses the opera prima by the filmmaker Adina Pintilie, Touch Me Not (Nu m? atinge-m?, 2018), winner of the Golden Bear and Best First Feature at the Berlin Film Festival. First, we look at the context of the film text, focusing on its detachment from the tradition of the so-called Romanian New Wave and its hybrid aesthetic approach, halfway between observational and experimental cinema. Secondly, we analyse the theses that the film discourse proposes in its thematization of sexuality and body. To do this, we use the Freudian theorization of sexuality and Foucaultian reflection on biopower, following Teresa de Lauretis’ approach (2008) to combine the two authors. Throughout the text we address the way in which the body becomes a space from which to think about the relationship between the individual and the social, the private and the public, the relationship with the other or with oneself. Finally, we conclude by highlighting how, with a clear political and socio-educational motivation, the movie proposes a use of a filmic interpellation that, explicitly, tries to involve spectators both intellectual and emotionally.