With bare breasts they shocked the ruling men: A film tells the tragic fate of a Femen activist

This film is as merciless as the self-destructive art it depicts. In the biopic "Oxana," French director Charlène Favier vividly depicts the tragic story of Ukrainian artist Oxana Shachko, who described herself as a "sextremist." She took her own life in 2018 at the age of 31.

She began as an icon painter, protested against patriarchy as a co-founder of the Femen collective, and ultimately transformed her own life into a Gesamtkunstwerk. In an interview, Favier compares her film to a painting. She conceived the individual scenes as "brushstrokes" of a larger picture. Indeed, the composition, color scheme, and the spherical visual aesthetic testify to an artistic creative will that transcends the narrative of the film's plot.

Charlène Favier manages to avoid the two most important dangers posed by her subject: the film neither descends into hagiography nor into a moral lesson. As a teenager, Oksana Shachko, played by Ukrainian actress Albina Korzh, follows the strict rules of icon painting, which leave little room for individual expression. She also considers entering a monastery. She becomes painfully aware of the discrimination she faces because of her gender: only with a special permit can she enter an otherwise all-male icon painting school.

When her icons burn due to the fault of her drunken father, she decides to channel her unbridled creative energy into political projects. With like-minded friends, she founds Femen – a group of angry young women who bring their bodies into public spaces as works of art. With their breasts exposed and slogans inscribed on them, they force the ruling men to direct their gazes, both lustful and shocked.

The Femen activists soon decided to protest against the patriarchal dictatorships in Belarus and Russia. However, the Lukashenko and Putin regimes retaliated brutally: In Belarus, the naked activists were doused with gasoline in freezing temperatures and threatened with burning to death; in Russia, Shachko's henchmen broke both of her forearms.

After fleeing to France, the Femen collective falls apart: In Paris, the battle cry "liberté, nudité" becomes a fashion. The women increasingly pursue their own interests. Oxana Shachko has no choice but to counteract her icon painting by creating blasphemous works of art.

Favier's film unfolds the power of an ancient tragedy. The protagonist is Antigone, who courageously defends her values ​​to her own demise. She is Iphigenia, who, as a victim of male tyranny, becomes a priestess. And finally, she is Medea, who takes revenge on a young god by mutilating her own life's work. All of these meanings are masterfully conveyed visually.

In disturbing strobe-like scenes, the director dissects the character's personality into these mythical components. Physical violence is largely ignored. Oxana's torture in the Russian prison is revealed only in her plastered arms, and her suicide is hinted at in Oxana's shadowy caress of a belt.

In her film, Favier superimposes three temporal structures: the linear time of Oksana's biography, the cyclical time of the pagan Kupala festival with which the film begins and ends, and finally, the fragmented time of Oksana's last day of life. It is the director's great achievement that she does not confuse her audience with this complex structure. On the contrary: With this triple temporality, she provides a coherent explanation for Oksana's fate, which paradoxically fluctuates between absolute self-empowerment and degrading external control.

The linear life span depicts the development of her icon painting, from the authentication of the event of salvation to the protest of blasphemy. This process is embedded in the circle of life that transforms the innocent dance of the flower children into a wild Walpurgis Night. And finally, on her last day, all aspects of her challenging life converge: the uncomprehending interrogation by a social worker, the intrusive questions of a journalist, the insurmountable distance from her caring mother, the desperate love for a war photographer, the struggle for the authenticity of her own art.

Oxana's last day is narrated scene by scene throughout the film. Flashbacks explain the growing despair. Art, which, along with love, becomes Oxana's most important means of expression, gives way to increasing speechlessness. The last day gravitates with inexorable necessity toward suicide, which in the film resembles more a silent disappearance than a violent attack on the self.