365 Days
Year: 2020
Director: Barbara Bialowas & Tomasz Mandes
Starring: Michele Moronne & Anna-Maria Sieklucka
Runtime: 116 mins
BBFC: 18
Published: 27/06/20
Director: Barbara Bialowas & Tomasz Mandes
Starring: Michele Moronne & Anna-Maria Sieklucka
Runtime: 116 mins
BBFC: 18
Published: 27/06/20
I don’t honestly know what I was expecting when I went into 365 Days. All I knew it that it was the ‘new’ 50 Shades of Grey…so understandably I set my expectations low, but 365 Days manages to actually be worse somehow. But just how terrible is it?
365 Days is a Polish erotic drama directed, surprisingly, by a woman named Barbara Bialowas (and a also guy named Tomasz Mandes). Surprising because the famous sex scenes are filmed in a way that can surely only be designed for men, so it surprises me that it wasn’t only a man that directed this. Despite that, I don’t think I know a man that would sit and watch this by himself, so why do all the sex scenes show only female boobs, and nothing regarding the male when it’s clearly made for a female audience. Free the peen I say!
Now I know you’re not going into 365 Days for the story, don’t try to tell me you are, because watching 365 Days for the story is just about as fulfilling as watching porn for the story. But regardless, the set dressing as I’ll refer to it is about the head of a crime family, Massimo Torricelli (Michelle Morrone), who kidnaps a beautiful young woman called Laura Biel (Anna-Maria Seiklucka) because he thought he saw her one time and thought she looked pretty. Like that’s the premise and if that doesn’t send all sorts of warning signals off in your head, I don’t know what does. Anyway, Massimo tells Laura that she has 365 days to fall in love with him. During which time she is not allowed to leave his home unless he is with her. He will also not touch her unless she allows him to (a rule he sort of breaks at one point in the film, but this thing is held together by the flimsiest plot in the world, so I don’t really care at this point). So, whilst Massimo is a kidnapper, gangster, and generally a nasty guy, at least he isn’t a rapist am I right ladies! Almost enough to leave you salivating.
365 Days is a Polish erotic drama directed, surprisingly, by a woman named Barbara Bialowas (and a also guy named Tomasz Mandes). Surprising because the famous sex scenes are filmed in a way that can surely only be designed for men, so it surprises me that it wasn’t only a man that directed this. Despite that, I don’t think I know a man that would sit and watch this by himself, so why do all the sex scenes show only female boobs, and nothing regarding the male when it’s clearly made for a female audience. Free the peen I say!
Now I know you’re not going into 365 Days for the story, don’t try to tell me you are, because watching 365 Days for the story is just about as fulfilling as watching porn for the story. But regardless, the set dressing as I’ll refer to it is about the head of a crime family, Massimo Torricelli (Michelle Morrone), who kidnaps a beautiful young woman called Laura Biel (Anna-Maria Seiklucka) because he thought he saw her one time and thought she looked pretty. Like that’s the premise and if that doesn’t send all sorts of warning signals off in your head, I don’t know what does. Anyway, Massimo tells Laura that she has 365 days to fall in love with him. During which time she is not allowed to leave his home unless he is with her. He will also not touch her unless she allows him to (a rule he sort of breaks at one point in the film, but this thing is held together by the flimsiest plot in the world, so I don’t really care at this point). So, whilst Massimo is a kidnapper, gangster, and generally a nasty guy, at least he isn’t a rapist am I right ladies! Almost enough to leave you salivating.
I’m going to spoil the rest of the story because I need to talk about how terrible this thing actually is, so if you’ve yet to watch 365 days my verdict is don’t unless you’re really drunk with a group of friends.
Anyway, back to business. Laura decides to have sex with Massimo because he saves her from drowning, despite the fact that it was he who pushed her off the side of his yacht in the first place. His dick is so good it melts her brain and she spends the next several weeks quite literally attached to his penis.
She proclaims her love for him, they decide to get married, and then she’s assassinated by unknown assailants after buying her wedding dress which is where the film ends. My girlfriend and I just sat gobsmacked that the film had the audacity to call that an ending and then spent the next several minutes in eye watering laughter at how terrible the whole experience was. It’s honestly like they lost the last 20 pages of the script and nobody bothered to write a new ending so they just ended it with the last page they had. What’s even worse is that this thing is based on a book…is that how the book ends? It feels like a 5- year-old wrote it “A man and lady fall in love, they decide to get married and then she dies, the end.” With that exact amount of emotion and nuance I might add.
What about the general filmmaking though? I mean the reason why we are all here is because the sex scenes are supposed to be super raunchy right? Well 365 Days also fails in almost every area possible here too. The cinematography is made up of boring shot/reverse shots for the entire film besides a couple of pans here and there. It’s like whoever operated the camera and planned the shots just finished a ‘shooting for film’ basics course at a community college and then went on to film this.
As a result, the sex scenes are awful! Like why is this the main draw to the film? Some of them are filmed like action sequences in the Jason Bourne films with the camera being so shaky you can’t work out what’s happening anyway. All the other times, literally all of them, you can see the supposedly naked characters wearing underwear…underwear that doesn’t even match their skin, like I saw Massimo’s actor wearing black underwear in almost every sex scene. There’s also a blowjob scene near the beginning which is hilarious because you can see what the woman is sucking on and it’s clearly not a penis. I get that obviously this is a film, it can’t be actual sex. But at least 50 Shades of Grey used some level of filmmaking finesse to make it look like they were having sex. 365 Days has fewer, less exciting sex scenes, that aren’t filmed anywhere near as well. So, congrats to 50 Shades I suppose for doing something right?
Anyway, back to business. Laura decides to have sex with Massimo because he saves her from drowning, despite the fact that it was he who pushed her off the side of his yacht in the first place. His dick is so good it melts her brain and she spends the next several weeks quite literally attached to his penis.
She proclaims her love for him, they decide to get married, and then she’s assassinated by unknown assailants after buying her wedding dress which is where the film ends. My girlfriend and I just sat gobsmacked that the film had the audacity to call that an ending and then spent the next several minutes in eye watering laughter at how terrible the whole experience was. It’s honestly like they lost the last 20 pages of the script and nobody bothered to write a new ending so they just ended it with the last page they had. What’s even worse is that this thing is based on a book…is that how the book ends? It feels like a 5- year-old wrote it “A man and lady fall in love, they decide to get married and then she dies, the end.” With that exact amount of emotion and nuance I might add.
What about the general filmmaking though? I mean the reason why we are all here is because the sex scenes are supposed to be super raunchy right? Well 365 Days also fails in almost every area possible here too. The cinematography is made up of boring shot/reverse shots for the entire film besides a couple of pans here and there. It’s like whoever operated the camera and planned the shots just finished a ‘shooting for film’ basics course at a community college and then went on to film this.
As a result, the sex scenes are awful! Like why is this the main draw to the film? Some of them are filmed like action sequences in the Jason Bourne films with the camera being so shaky you can’t work out what’s happening anyway. All the other times, literally all of them, you can see the supposedly naked characters wearing underwear…underwear that doesn’t even match their skin, like I saw Massimo’s actor wearing black underwear in almost every sex scene. There’s also a blowjob scene near the beginning which is hilarious because you can see what the woman is sucking on and it’s clearly not a penis. I get that obviously this is a film, it can’t be actual sex. But at least 50 Shades of Grey used some level of filmmaking finesse to make it look like they were having sex. 365 Days has fewer, less exciting sex scenes, that aren’t filmed anywhere near as well. So, congrats to 50 Shades I suppose for doing something right?
The acting is horribly wooden. The language the actors speak constantly switches between Polish, Italian, and broken English. I don’t know whether the script was designed to make it sound like they couldn’t speak English, or whether the actors couldn’t speak English, or whether the scriptwriter couldn’t write English dialogue, but the two actors can barely get a line of English dialogue out without it being grammatically incorrect or just using the wrong words altogether. I had to watch the film with subtitles on because I often needed to read what had been said to make heads or tails of what it actually meant, but even they weren’t overly helpful a lot of the time.
So why is this film popular? I simply do not understand it. Please let me know why! In short, do not watch 365 Days. I’m sure it’ll provide some hearty belly laughs for a girls night in with pizza and wine which if that’s what you want then so be it. But the film fails to provide engagingly erotic sex scenes, and there was never anything else going for the film anyway so why bother? Just re-watch 50 Shades of Grey (didn’t ever think those words would leave my mouth), or if you really want to watch something arousing (and probably with a better production value) there are plenty of porn sites around offering more arousing content with the same attention put into the story and acting.
So why is this film popular? I simply do not understand it. Please let me know why! In short, do not watch 365 Days. I’m sure it’ll provide some hearty belly laughs for a girls night in with pizza and wine which if that’s what you want then so be it. But the film fails to provide engagingly erotic sex scenes, and there was never anything else going for the film anyway so why bother? Just re-watch 50 Shades of Grey (didn’t ever think those words would leave my mouth), or if you really want to watch something arousing (and probably with a better production value) there are plenty of porn sites around offering more arousing content with the same attention put into the story and acting.