Uncomfortable Proximities: Sticky Exposure and Diffractive Presence in Imaculat and Sorella di clausura
Uncomfortable Proximities: Sticky Exposure and Diffractive Presence in Imaculat and Sorella di clausura

Summary/Abstract: This article develops a diffractive reading of two Romanian films directed by women: Monica Stan and George Chiper-Lillemark’s Imaculat (2021) and Ivana Mladenović’s Sorella di clausura (2025).Drawing on Jean-Luc Nancy’s ontology of corporeality, Sara Ahmed’s affective economies,Vivian Sobchack’s phenomenology of cinematic embodiment, and Karen Barad’s agential realism,the article asks not what these films represent, but what corporeal and affective configurations they produce.It proposes the concept of sticky exposure to name the intersection between bodily openness and historically accumulated affects that adhere to feminine presence. In Imaculat, this takes the form of arrested exposure, where stillness and duration place the body at the limit of signification. In Sorella di clausura, exposure becomes circulatory, shaped by mediated attachment, affective overflow, and unstable intimacy.Read through one another, these regimes generate an interference pattern of uncomfortable proximity.Feminine bodies are rendered affectively near while resisting psychological transparency and representational capture.

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