In 1 9 9 1, two men, Max and Albert, volunteer to be frozen in a hibernation experiment for three years. However, when they wake up inside a chamber, they realize it is year 2044—and that all the men have gone extinct after an anti-male bomb was invented that targets the Y chromosome, and was used in a war. The underground civilization is run by women who reproduce through parthenogenesis, and led by Her Excellency. One female scientist, Lamia, likes them, and helps them flee when Max and Albert are put on trial and sentenced to sex surgery to "naturalize" into the society. Even though the Earth's surface is allegedly contaminated by radiation, Max, Albert, Lamia and a certain Emma escape there and find out everything is normal. They stumble upon the mansion of Her Excellency, who turns out to be a man in disguise. Max and Albert mix their sperm into the fertility clinic and thereby introduce male babies back into the society.
Just like several allegorical social satires, "Sexmission" also takes one flawed aspect of a society that was normalized and exaggerates it to such an extent that the viewers can decipher several messages from it and take a more self-critical, revelatory approach after it, in this case by taking the patriarchy, turning it upside down and showing what it would look like if a matriarchy would behave the same, in this story where two men wake up in the future and find out they are the only males left in a world inhabited and ruled exclusively by women. The director Juliusz Machulski takes this concept to use it as a biting satire on sexism, discrimination, fanaticism, and totalitarian dictatorship in general, based on one group thinking they have the right to rule over the others which they deem inferior. There are several good jokes in the first half of the film. For instance, upon finding out that they have been awakened from the hibernation experiment after 53 years, instead of the planned 3 years, Max protests that he demands to be paid overtime. Despite a limited budget, far away from Hollywood, the set designs of the underground city hallways and the costumes are good—even using rudimentary computer graphics to depict a location on the screen.
The highlight is arguably the trial of the two men by a council of hundred women, which has some delicious dialogue, since one group of women are extremist feminists who argue with them: "At the present, we are all capable of protecting ourselves from the infection called - man!" - "If it weren't for men, the world would have never developed. The history of technology is male history. You can't deny that!" The women in the council then protest: "That is a lie, can you name one male scientist?" - "Copernicus." - "That's a lie! Copernicus was a woman!" This is a sly jab at ideological fundamentalism which resorts to distortion and historical revisionism just to fit their dogma in front of contradictions. The female prosecutor then goes: "Some man named Cain invented crime and applied it on his sister Abel. Another man invented prostitution, cowardness, laziness, slavery... Summing up, we should thank you for all the evil on the world, starting from religious wars up to uterine cancer!" The rest of the movie is nowhere near as fun, since the basic idea was not that well developed. The 40-minute escape segment of the two men is conventional and stale, lacking prepared inspiration or some clearer vision as to how to lead the storyline: the authors needed more imagination in developing this concept. Despite this routine second half and some clumsy flaws (the infamous last scene zoom-in that becomes a freeze frame), the film is still amusing and stimulates the viewers to think, advocating that we should have a more open mind and be able to reach out to people who are different, instead of resorting to narrow-minded exclusion.
Grade:++
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