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Irina Palm
Directed by Sam Garbarski
Starring Marianne Faithful, Miki Manojlovic
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Critics are always writing about "the last frontier" in films -- that last expanse of material that film has not yet explored. Extreme violence? Explicit sex? Attacks on the American government? Thanks to movies such as Hostel, Brown Bunny, and Fahrenheit 9/11, all those bases are now covered.

So what's left? Possibly the subject that makes audiences most squeamish now is the sexualized older woman. I'm not talking about a glamourous Julie Christie (who at 68 is fabulous as ever) or the equally attractive Juliet Prowse or Chita Rivera and their ilk of well-preserved vivacious show-women. I'm talking about the older dumpy woman, the frumpy frowzy widow or suburban housewife whose sexual desire may still be teeming, but who's no advertisement for beauty.

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o a warm welcome to Irina Palm, a great new film that's quietly radical. Written by Philippe Blasband and Sam Garbarski and directed by the latter, the film begins as a quirky family drama -- that staple of 1960s British film and of U.K. television even today. Here we have a middle-class family just getting by and struggling with the illness of their child, who has a nearly-incurable disease. There are tensions: the wife/mother doesn't really like her mother-in-law, who's at odds with her son. Meanwhile, grandmother dotes on the sickly grandson. National Health Service doctors are clueless about what to do, and suggest the boy be taken to Australia for experimental, very expensive treatments.

The first inkling that this is not your standard unhappy-family / ill-child / devoted-granny movie is that granny is played by Marianne Faithfull, famous for her history with the Rolling Stones, her rock career, her years of addictions, and a more recent stint as a cabaret star. Faithfull is no one's idea of a traditional grandmother. After some 20 minutes of family drama, Irina Palm takes a curious turn when grandmother Maggie takes the train to London to find a job to make money to pay for her grandson's medical treatment. A widowed housewife in the London suburbs, she's spectacularly unqualified for anything. But she happens on a seedy club that's looking for hostesses. Contrary to expectations, this is not a job seating couples at tea-tables and smiling at them over scones and clotted cream. "Hostess" here means sex worker, and Miki (Miki Manojlovic), the Serbian immigrant owner/manager, dissuades Maggie from asking too many questions. Overcoming revulsion, Maggie takes the job, and soon she's sitting behind a wall with glory holes and masturbating anonymous dicks. (Well, what did you think was going to happen in a film with Marianne Faithfull playing a grandmother?)

Irina Palm presents its story with everyday matter-of-factness, never leering at or mocking its characters. Maggie is shown as a woman desperate to make money (the reality for most low-end sex workers). Jerking-off strange men through a hole in the wall comes off as work that's just unexciting and strenuous. (At one point Maggie has to take time off for a work-related injury because she gets what she calls "penis elbow.")

The film's twist is that Maggie -- well, her hand -- is so good at the job that she becomes famous throughout London and starts pulling in good money. Maggie's son Tom (Kevin Bishop) is shocked when he discovers his mother's new career, and when Maggie opens up to her friends in the village, they're fascinated but soon squeamishly distance themselves. Tom is furious at his mother, even though he himself can't provide for his son's extraordinary needs. Maggie and Miki eventually get involved -- and her life takes a new turn.

Irina Palm is funny and unexpectedly moving. Faithfull gives a wonderful performance filled with nuance and feeling. Her role transcends both the plot's "jokey" aspects, as well as the essentially sentimental trajectory of the familial drama. Irina Palm is probably this year's most surprising film so far. Its power lies not in the funny idea of Marianne Faithfull as a dowdy granny with a quick hand on a dick, but rather in helping puncture culture-wide revulsion at an older woman discovering her sexuality.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com