Queer women of Kantemir Balagov: subjectivities in extreme contexts

The discussion focuses on two films – Closeness (2017) and Beanpole (2019) – by Kantemir Balagov, and is concerned with interrogating the possibilities of queer-crip dynamic in contemporary Russian-language cinema. I argue that the queer-crip dynamic allows the film director to stage a critique of ableism and heteronormativity as part of the examination of power dynamics in Soviet and post-Soviet contexts. Balagov demonstrates that the heteronormative, cis-gender, able-bodied, white person of mainstream cultural identity dominates the discourse by placing oneself in charge of power relations. Balagov’s self-criticality permits a complex understanding of queer women as powerful individuals forming relationships through own agency. In his oeuvre, crip-queerness emerges in extreme contexts encompassing a range of tropes such as claustrophobia, punishment and strangulation, which are associated with sexual practices, on the one hand, and on the other, with the protest of the queer body against repressive social regimes. The discussion advances debates about crip-queerness in world cinemas by conceptualising the notions of queerness and extreme contexts, that is, contexts characterised by the extensive and intolerable magnitude of experience and its physical and emotional effects on individuals.