GENTLE

Once the spray tan and stage makeup are washed away after her latest bodybuilding competition, Edina is immediately back at the gym. World championships are quickly approaching, and there’s more pressure riding on her proportionately built shoulders than ever. Adam, her partner and trainer, and former bodybuilding champion himself, closely monitors her food and supplement intake, criticizing any small misstep. As the financial, emotional, and physical burden of maintaining her lifestyle increases, Edina finds spiritual release in the unlikeliest of places — working as a specialty escort. From the grueling workouts and controlling atmosphere at the gym to the playful, freewheeling nature of the escort service, Gentle deftly navigates Edina’s disparate worlds and the mounting friction between them. Co-directors Anna Eszter Nemes and László Csuja intimately explore the underbelly of an industry solely devoted to appearance, revealing its human cost. Nonprofessional actor Eszter Csonka delivers a powerful corporeal performance as Edina, using her sturdy physique to subtly evoke Edina’s internal struggle between cementing her legacy as a world champion and leaving it all behind to save herself.