A cross between the British series Sex Education, the HBO series Silicon Valley and the Reese Witherspoon movie Election, this Polish comedy stalks Natalia, a first-rate N.E.R.D. whose entire college experience has been spent coding her sleep app invention. The exhausted-looking Natalia desperately needs to win the startup competition that her Warsaw engineering college holds for seniors as her ticket out of the Polish sticks where she grew up. Her dedication to her project is singular, complete with giving herself daily affirmations "Stop looking like a victim because that's how you actually become one ... You are motivated. You are strong. Natalia, must believe in yourself." When the faculty advisor tells her she'll never win with a sleep app because it's not sexy enough, she's despondent. Until she comes up with a better plan: a sex app focused on the only sex subject the world has ignored: women's orgasms. The issue: Natalia has never had one. She needs to recruit a team.
That's the set-up for a story about how three vastly different college women bond as friends and teammates in order to bring more orgasms to Poland. Each of the three primary characters is well-developed: the seemingly content solo Nerd Natalia; her best friend Paulina, a Catholic who has been having mission-style sex exclusively with her fiance (and no orgasms); and Monika, a sexually adventurous and feisty dormmate. Sexify was not made with the big budget of something like the HBO-backed Silicon Valley. No commercial Hollywood feel here, which added to its appeal for me. There is plenty of nudity, but it is not exploitive - the women's bodies are real women's bodies. The experience of watching the show, with its English subtitles and setting in Warsaw, feels much like the story of the three friends themselves, there's this genuine feeling of rooting for the underdog. It's quirky, funny, sometimes goofy and a delight. As of the timing of this review Netflix is still considering a second season. Fingers crossed here.
