Anna-Maria Sieklucka and Michele Morrone in the film 365 Dni. - Next Films

  • The film 365 Dni  has not left the Top 10 most watched content on Netflix since it went online on June 9. It tells the story of a Sicilian mafia who sequesters a young woman for a year in the hope that she will fall in love with him.
  • Classified in the “romantic” category by Netflix, 365 Dni combines sexist stereotypes and myths relating to what feminist theorists have called the “rape culture”.
  • 365 Can Dni Damage Netflix's Image? A source close to the platform confides, embarrassed, that the film "does not reflect (his) editorial line".

Until then, when we thought of Netflix, we had in mind series like Orange Is the New Black or Sabrina's New Adventures . The first being a pioneer in putting forward a trans person on the screen, the second labeled feminist series. From now on, there will also be 365 Dni (“365 days”), directed and produced by Barbara Białowąs. A Polish film, put online on June 9 on the platform, which is controversial by conveying a series of sexist stereotypes and an eroticized vision of rape.

The plot features Massimo, a Sicilian mafia who sees his father die before his eyes, a few seconds after having seen on a beach a young and beautiful Polish girl, named Laura. Obsessed with this image, the rich and powerful belligerent decides to find this woman. As in Blanka Lipinska's best-selling novel, he ends up finding her and sequestering her in his Sicilian castle, with swimming pool included. It gives him 365 days to fall in love with him. Beyond this period, he will release her if the young lady does not fall in love with him.

A very popular film

This pitch alone could suggest that we are dealing with a huge turnip that we wish we could just ignore. However, it reaches such heights on the digital platform - it is this Tuesday, more than ten days after its online publication, in third position in the top 10 most viewed content on Netflix France - that voices are raised to denounce a gratin example of what is called the "rape culture". And that a decryption is essential.

“The culture of rape is the way a society views rape, rape victims and rapists at a given time. It is defined by a set of beliefs, myths, received ideas around these three items. We speak of “culture” because these received ideas permeate society, are transmitted from generation to generation and evolve over time, ”summarizes Valérie Rey-Robert in the book Une culture du rap à la française .

The film cultivates ambiguity

The culture of rape, according to many feminist theorists, eroticizes rape to make it more acceptable. This is the case of one of the very first scenes of 365 Dni , in which Massimo jumps on a flight attendant, and without bluntness or words, positions her in front of his fly.

The woman does not express a verbal challenge, of course, but has clearly been jostled. The film cultivates this ambiguity: after this brutal fellatio, she will have tears, but also a small smile. Doubtless raped, but happy - as if it could be. Later in the film, Massimo will "correct" Laura after an argument by kissing / raping her, her protests turning into approval.

The film only repeats, throughout the scenes, this idea: women would like to be forced. "This is the basics of rape culture: when she says" no ", it is simply that she has to be given time to say yes", analyzes Geneviève Sellier, historian of French cinema and founder of the site Gender and screen.

Laura is subjected to four sexual assaults and seven bottleneck scenes, filmed as a fashion photo shoot. The scene of the fake rape on the plane “is filmed in full light, on the other hand the actress who masturbates in a parallel assembly is in complete darkness, as if the fact of masturbating were much less banal than d 'be raped', notes Eléonore Stévenin-Morguet, who runs the 1001 heroines site, and has counted the strangulation scenes.

"The female character is falot"

The attacker is shown as a prince charming. As he chases her on his yacht, she falls into the water. But he dives to retrieve her and will be seen as a savior ... to which she will consent this time. Many of her actions revolve around a pattern that closely resembles what feminists call the “aggressor's strategy,” notes Eléonore Stévenin-Morguet: isolation, devaluation, reversal of guilt, threats. We see, for example, Massimo controlling Laura's clothing purchases.

The hero has a history, a past, a present, a future: we saw him near his father, we set the scene. On the other hand, we hardly know what the heroine does, who does not seem to have her own existence, other than that of shopping, notes Alice Rahmoun, the other host of 1001 heroes. When women talk to each other, it is only to talk about men. "The female character is stupid, he is nothing but a male fantasy," sums up Geneviève Sellier.

Superficial princess

The heroine is presented sometimes as a fragile little girl, who never ceases to faint, sometimes as a sort of devil obsessed with sex. "These are all the stereotypes of women who need to be protected," explains Gaëlle Démare, of the organizing team of the feminist association NousToutes. The child and the whore, then at the end, the mother, figure who necessarily redeems it, while returning it to its function of uterus, after having been presented as a woman-object, a kind of superficial princess who spends her time in shops.

Because women always end up paying for these stereotypes in which men lock them up. Since she has no independence and exists only by and for man, Laura is also presented as venal, capricious and hysterical. An ultra-sexist program announced in the first minutes of the film, where Massimo's father warned him with this sentence: "A beautiful woman is heaven for the eyes, hell for the soul and purgatory of the purse" , quoting Bernard Fontenelle, one of the many male chauvinist writers in the French literary pantheon.

"Latin lover"with a masculinist sauce

365 Dni may be made by a woman, and ride the wave of mommy-porn (porn for moms) in  50 shades of Gray , all its narrative structure, the way the camera lingers on the actress and on the bodies fall under the “male gaze”, a masculine gaze, trapped in stereotypes. “The sex scenes are very violent, with a frantic rhythm almost exclusively focused on blowjobs. We are 80% in male fantasies, "notes historian Geneviève Sellier.

The hero has all the attributes of a macho vision of power: guns, chest, muscles, money. And bestiality: we also see it in portrait alongside a lion. "It is a vision of masculinity reduced to the elementary forms of male domination: the man is the one who bangs, takes out his gun, who has crackers", analyzes Geneviève Sellier. A figure of "  Latin lover  " "revisited in a masculinist way", according to the historian, who remembers that the figure of Latin lover was at the beginning a female fantasy, for example through an actor like Rudolph Valentino.

"365 Dni" and the image of Netflix

The problem, underlines Gaëlle Démare, is that the film risks having very concrete consequences on young adults who watch it: “It is horrible to show that it is by imposing itself that it will work. The film is subject to a restriction for those under the age of 16, but also classified in the "romantic" category, alongside much less violent films. Which raises the question of Alice Rahmoun. She wondered whether there should not be a more explicit warning, which better signals the category "sexual violence".

365 Dni is not produced but only distributed by the platform, unlike the two series mentioned at the beginning of this article. But one can wonder what consistency there is in producing such series and distributing 365 Dni , as if the commitment on which society plays to attract the benevolence of feminist and progressive youth was only at the yardstick of his wallet. “It's absolute cynicism. Netflix is ​​the most accomplished expression of Hollywood capitalism. They produce whatever is likely to match their targets. An aggregation of niche audiences, ”criticizes Geneviève Sellier.

365 Can Dni  harm the image of Netflix among the youth of big cities? "It's quite surprising because there is an interesting work in the Netflix series on consent and romantic relationships, as in Unbelievable or Sex education , and there that ruins everything", laments Gaëlle Démare. A source close to Netflix confided, embarrassed, that the film "does not reflect the editorial line" of the platform. And cites the "very large number of titles" broadcast by the multinational. Casting error or niche strategy?

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  • Sexual violence
  • Netflix
  • Cinema
  • Television
  • eroticism
  • Rape