So you think you’re gonna just scroll past the title X-Rated Queen (now streaming on Max) without it piquing your curiosity just a little? Didn’t think so. This Polish series is an all-over-the-place drama about a one-time wannabe nun who became a porn star, which is quite the ideological swing, eh? The premise feels a little too calculated for provocation, and the debut episode illustrates that getting a rise out of the audience may be its primary goal – if you aren’t driven away by its tendency to emphasize flash over substance.
Opening Shot: Hazy footage of Lucyna (Anna Szymanczyk) and her young daughter Kasia cavorting on a beach.
The Gist: Warbly 1980s VHS footage of Lucyna, aka Lucy Love, plays. Yes, it’s porn. Moaning, groaning, body oil, bangs hairsprayed to the heavens. The tape rolls as Kasia (Julia Polaczek), now 20, goes glassy-eyed, shooting heroin and having sex with two men, one of whom sneers, “Watch how your mommy f—s!” She asks for more heroin, ends up overdosing and is rushed to the hospital.
Meanwhile, Lucy waits in the wings of a talk show, waiting to walk on stage. Seconds before cameras roll, her handler gets a call about Kasia’s overdose, but keeps the news to himself. Parked in the interviewee’s chair, it’s clear that Lucy is quite the charismatic personality, a porn star whose every word and gesture feels highly performative and rehearsed. She’s on-brand. After a probing question addressing her feelings about love, she teases an answer, goes to commercial and is promptly arrested by a detective.
As Lucy parks in an interrogation room, we learn it’s 1996. She’s being accused of murder. Photos of bones are dropped in front of her. Serious shit, but she sits confidently and coyly, as if playing a game of Prove It, Copper. Here, we flash back to earlier in Lucy’s life. Before she was Lucy, she was just Lucyna, who wanted to be a nun. She joins a convent, is sexually assaulted by a superior nun and fights back by pinning the horny sister’s hand to a butcher’s block with a knife. A cop offers not to pursue criminal charges if Lucyna spies on the German company that works in conjunction with her father. The endeavor finds her falling for a nice German guy who says she’s beautiful and should be a model, and takes Polaroid photos of her. They plan to run away with him back to his home, but he leaves her behind, heartbroken. We learn that her mother is cold and cruel, and her father is a fairly sweet man.
We jump forward, still in the flashback. Lucyna’s pregnant and apparently getting shotgun-married to Janusz (Julian Swiezewski), a cab driver who we soon learn is, well, bad at sex. She’s not into this guy at all, and it gets worse: He rapes her in the kitchen after she rejects his advances. She plots to run away to Germany with young Kasia, but at the last second is only able to acquire a passport for herself. They’re separated, and both weep as Lucyna prepares to depart.
Back to 1996: The detective casually mentions that Kasia OD’ed and is in the hospital. Lucy rushes to see her daughter, and arrives in the ICU just as Kasia flatlines and doctors attempt to revive her.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Other series about porn and/or with porn storylines: Californication, The Deuce.
Our Take: The debut episode of X-Rated Queen struggles to find a consistent tone, and is visually stylized within an inch of its life. At times it feels grim and ugly, and at others it seems to be winking at us. It’s kitsch, it’s satire; it’s serious and heavy, it’s melodramatic. We get showy wide-angle shots, grainy textures, abrupt edits, handheld cams – a veritable stylistic kitchen sink. On top of that, it chops along with little narrative flow, as if it’s condensing large amounts of story into a tight 45 minutes.
Read: Thus far, this series is trying too damn hard to be edgy. It’s likely to follow parallel dramatic tracks as it tells the story of our titular queen’s ventures in the porno biz and her transformation from Lucyna to Lucy Love, and tracks the current drama with her adult daughter. There’s some hope for this to get dramatically juicy, but it may be a tough go unless the series calms down its near-disorienting visual barrage and Szymanczyk tames her elevated and showy performance.
Sex and Skin: Nothing too graphic or revealing in the first episode – a few glimpses at the porn tape and some general soft-R-rated horniness. Note, there’s a reasonably disturbing sexual assault scene, in case anyone out there is sensitive to such things.
Parting Shot: Lucy bursts through the ICU door as doctors zap Kasia with a defibrillator.
Sleeper Star: So far, Adam Woronowicz shows a little life as Lucyna’s father, but a few more episodes will determine if he has any significant impact on the story.
Most Pilot-y Line: Lucy takes the talk show stage as the studio audience hoots and cheers. “You know me!” she coos. “You’ve been naughty!”
Our Call: The more patient among us might give X-Rated Queen another ep or two to see if it ever settles down and finds a groove. But there’s a bit too much hey look at me!!! here to warrant a recommendation. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
