This rather
bizarre movie from renowned French director Bertrand Bonello is set in a high
end Brothel in Paris at the turn of the 20th Century and is
essentially a series of tableaus of near naked woman lounging around as if they
are about to be painted. The house is
stunning and the girls are beautiful and so it is all quite decadent and lovely
to look at, but underneath the surface its all more than a little creepy.
There is no
plot as such as we just follow a period in the Brothel’s declining last years
as it is doomed to close when the rents keep rising astronomically, although
meanwhile one girl dies of syphilis and another is disfigured at the hands of
one of the more sadistic wealthy men that inhabit the place.
There are no
sex scenes at all in the film, which actually focuses more on the girls when they were
‘off-duty’ and there was a remarkable camaraderie and innocence (?) amongst
them as they pull together more like a family than a group of working
prostitutes.
A really odd
affair which days later I still cannot fathom out what the point to this was,
if there was one at all. Maybe the clue
is in the fact that Bonello is also a Prof at Le Fermis, the leading moviemaking school, and so just maybe this was an academic exercise, or even a vanity puff piece? Who knows! Interestingly enough his cast included two other important filmmakers: Xavier Beauvais who directed the stunning 'Of
Gods & Man', and Noeme Lvovsky who is best known for ‘Life Doesn’t Scare Me’. And evidently being part of this movie didn’t either.
★★★★★★
