Strong and Moving!

Brilliant and touching

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Some of the sequences in Malgorzata Szumowska's film are quite difficult to view - especially the scene where one of the student prostitutes (Anaïs Demoustier) willingly allows herself to be urinated on by one of her clients, or has a champagne bottle thrust into her vagina. These moments are designed to emphasize the pitfalls of the whore's existence - even if both Charlotte and Alicja (Joanna Kulig) manage to make sufficient funds to support themselves in some style during their student lives.Nonetheless Szumowksa reminds us that we should not judge their decision too harshly. By contrasting their lives with that of well- to-do journalist Anna (Juliette Binoche), who is writing an article for ELLE magazine about their lives, the director suggests that in many ways the prostitutes live a superior existence. They enjoy an independence that is denied to someone like Anna, who has to spend most of her leisure time caring for a feckless husband (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) and her three children. ELLES is full of scenes where Anna is shown working alone in the kitchen, or talking on the phone to a disembodied voice. As the film closes, she is shown silently listening at a dinner party while Patrick and his friends prattle on about various subjects; in the end she grows so frustrated that she simply walks out of the house for a breath of welcome fresh air.In contrast both Charlotte and Alicja enjoy a considerable degree of independence; they exert power over their (mostly middle-aged) clients, to the extent that they can determine in advance what they will do and what they will not do. The money they earn gives them the spending power to please themselves.As the film progresses, so we see Anna becoming more and more enamored of the girls' lives. She is shown talking in the park to Charlotte; the two of them become quite close to one another, as denoted through a series of two-shots. While alone with Alicja in Alicija's apartment, Anna partakes of vodka (although claiming that she does not drink), and ends up on a passionate embrace with the younger woman. While alone in her own apartment, Anna pleasures herself in an extended scene, where Szumowska's camera focuses on her face as she gradually comes to orgasm. Sex gives her the kind of power that she can never enjoy either at work or during her family life.In the end, however, that power proves illusory. The film ends with an extended shot of Anna sitting down to breakfast with her husband and two of her children - an image of familial normality that suggests mental as well as physical imprisonment. Although empathizing with the two girls, she can never enjoy their independence.ELLES is a thought-provoking piece, shot in deliberately low-key style. Director Szumowska achieves some striking thematic effects, most notably through the use of music that often contrasts with the emotions of the characters shown on screen. At one moment Anna is shown walking morosely about her living-room; on the soundtrack we hear the second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony - a homage to death. The grandeur of the music is set against the mundaneness of Anna's life; she would love to improve it, if only she could.

This movie, like another recent French movie "Student Services", exposes the apparent current social problem of impoverished Parisian female university students resorting to prostitution. In America movies like this are generally preachy and alarmist and usually relegated to the Lifetime network where they're viewed mostly by bored housewives. I'm not exactly sure WHO these French movies are aimed at though, and they seem a little hypocritical. If you REALLY want to de-glamorize co-ed prostitution should you show quite so many scenes of impossibly attractive French actresses like Deborah Francois (in "Student Services") or Anais Demoustier (in this) having hot, naked, kinky sex? Women might appreciate the social message here, but most men will find it a little hard to concentrate on the message what with all the blood flowing from their brains to their boners. Even the middle-age female protagonist of this movie, a journalist played by Juliette Binoche, is so turned on by audiotapes of the Demnoustrier character's sex sessions that at one point she has to go in the bathroom and pleasure herself. She becomes so obsessed with her "expose" that she neglects her husband and children. She's definitely a strange, and not particularly likable, character. The movie is also surprisingly kinky. Demoustier's prostitute character has wine bottle inserted in her butt by a sadistic client. Another Polish prostitute has her large breasts urinated on. These scenes aren't graphic, of course, but the fact that they're included at all--combined with a rather muddled moral message--definitely tends to move this toward lurid exploitation.Binoche is not very good in this, but it might be the character she's saddled with. Demoustier is both sexy and adorable, but doesn't have much of a role, and her character pretty much disappears after the assault with the wine bottle. I didn't dislike this movie, but I prefer the similar "Student Services". It too seems a little at odds with itself message-wise, but it gives the major role to its sympathetic prostitute character. And it's not QUITE so exploitative and hypocritical.

This film is embarrassing on two levels: first because it's story line is so weak, and second because it ends not with a bang but a whimper. Oh, and there is also the seemingly endless sequence of fleshy scenes that serve to glorify porn and prostitution at one and the same time (the scenes include a sickening rape carried out with a bottle).The narrative appears to run something like this - A wealthy, materialistic magazine writer, trapped in a dull haute bourgeois lifestyle, sets out to investigate student prostitution. She is soon seduced by the charms of the girls and concludes that 'all men are bastards', including her boring husband, who uses her as a perfect dinner hostess in order to suck up to his boss.In a climactic scene, she walks out of the dinner party, leaving her husband and her (vile) male guests high and dry. But lo! Does she go off to join the free and easy (and wealthy) student prostitutes in their care-free, hedonistic life? Er, no! In very short order she returns to the breakfast table to serve the orange juice and muesli to her still dull, bourgeois husband and kids. Fin! To add to the (dis)pleasure, there are a number of odd sequences which seem to have no connection to the already fragile narrative thread: the writer visits and old man in hospital (is it her father?) and gives him a foot massage; she attempts to use a lavatory but finds she 'cannot continue'; she repeatedly tries to close the door of the family refrigerator but it won't close because an item on one of the door shelves has become dislodged.This unenlightening and unpleasant movie is one to avoid, Ms. Binoche notwithstanding.(Viewed at The Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK, 21 April 2012)

Faced with just the title and the name Juliet Binoche the actress is clearly the main - if not only - reason for watching this. If then the dirty-raincoat brigade read a review and note the subject matter then there is a second selling point to be noted. As it turns out both consumer groups are catered to and Binoche weighs in with another outstanding performance without breaking sweat. What is less easy to discern is a point of view; if, as we are led to believe, the number of young French girls happy to combine university seminars with hooking is on the increase, is this a good or a bad thing. Discuss. Journalist Binoche spends the entire film researching an article on the subject which will appear in Elle. She confines her research - at least as far as the film is concerned - to one-on-one interviews with just two hookers who are equally active students. Initially Binoche is inclined to view the girls' lifestyle as humiliating despite assurances from both girls that they more or less enjoy sex - both orthodox and unorthodox - with men mostly old enough to be their fathers and it is clear that it is Binoche who is more inclined to change her lifestyle in the wake of the interviews. Whilst certainly watchable it's difficult to see this one proving durable.