Elles

Elles is the second film I’ve seen this month that focuses, in part, on prostitution. It would be misleading to see this as the sole focus. It’s a subject that’s always going to grab attention but I think the film is really about something else. The main character (Anne) is wonderfully played by Juliette Binoche – I can’t imagine anyone else doing it so well. A middle class journalist, she is writing an article about students who turn to prostitution as a means of getting through uni. The two women that she meets in the course of interviewing for the article present an unexpected view of their work. The Juliet Binoche character is intrigued by both their perspectives and what it throws up about her own life.


There are few reviews of this film yet but mostly I think the reviewers have got it wrong. Read these two snippets:

“While Szumowska and her co-writer, Tine Byrckel, hammer home their arguably offensive theory that well-to-do femmes are acting as hookers in the kitchen and at the keyboard, they seem far less clear on what they want to say about actual harlotry. Scenes of the journalist's collegiate interview subjects satisfying male clients to earn tuition money are lit and shot like perfume commercials, even as the sex in some cases turns disturbingly brutal.” (from Variety)

and (from The Guardian):

“Juliette Binoche gives it her considerable all in this otherwise dubious film, which purports to investigate the moral and emotional price of teenage prostitution…Presumably the idea is to explore the emotional disconnect required to function as one of those can't-be-too-thin French bourgeoises.

I think what the film is about is not the metaphor of prostitution, but of compromise. The Anne character is not economically reliant on anyone. She does not need to prostitute herself, as the students feel they need to do (One compares the work favourably with working in a fastfood restaurant). She could have a viable and interesting life as a working journalist living by herself. The compromise comes in wanting a relationship, in having children, in wanting to work, in being a daughter, in being part of a middle–class mileau. Parts of herself are suppressed in this process – just as parts might also blossom. (A friend of mine said recently of her time as the mother of two very young children: “I feel like I lost myself for about five years.”) I think that’s where the film maker, Malgoska Szumowska is heading. Much of what we see of Anne’s life is unpleasant; her sons are providing little joy and her husband is disconnected and angry. She is frustrated. Not a pretty picture. One effective scene is when she visits her ailing father in hospital. She picks up his foot to give him a foot massage. Lots of feelings went through my head. What a loving thing this is to do. How horrible old men’s feet can be. How difficult it would be for me to massage my own fathers feet. The importance of touch. Its disappearance in life as you age.


You might think that the prostitution would not be pretty either. Szumowska tries to upset expectations here; the two women present their work as one that provides them with choices and as mostly benign. I was reminded very powerfully of Kate Holden’s account of her life as a prostitute Under my skin. I never quite believed that the things she described in that book did not have a substantial impact on her and I felt that with the accounts of the two girls in the film. I think Szumowska intends us to be sceptical observers; there are small cracks in the façade presented by the two girls.


Binoche is authentic and believable – it’s a very powerful film about being a woman.


Black & White & Sex is the other film I’ve seen recently that features sex workers. It’s a new Australian film by John Winter. This film is much more explicitly about the way we view prostitution though, like Elle, it wants to mess with our preconceptions about it. Winter said that he was inspired to make the film after going for a round of institutional funding in relation to another film script which featured a prostitute. The film fund reps were concerned that the portrayal of the sex worker was too upbeat – not “victim” enough. This inspired him to write the script for this, a film in which the sex worker character is played by eight different women (not dissimilar to the portrayal of Bob Dylan in the film I’m not there).


It begins with the feel of a play. Two characters on stage, almost entirely dialogue driven. I wasn’t sure it was going to work for a while, then the character of Angie got going. She reminded me of kids I’ve taught – like half-loved dogs, never quite reliable but yearning for contact. The film covers some great topics: intimacy, censorship, power, gender dynamics, love, control and trust. What happens is unexpected and interesting. It also looks good – shot in black and white, and using split screens where necessary to fragment the focus and force the viewer to make choices about what to look at. The use of eight actresses was clever; giving life to the idea that there are many facets and perceptions within the world of the sex worker; and that that person can embody universal desires and feelings but simultaneously be uniquely individual.


Need to conclude with this snippet from a review – just because I liked the imagery.

“The film industry, so the common wisdom goes, is chocked to the gills with carbon copy cinema, stuffed like a poisoned piñata with the bile and fluid of a zillion regurgitated ideas. Here is a bold, audacious and throbbingly original Australian film, particularly palatable for viewers partial to edgy, intimate and explorative interpersonal dramas.”

Julie Rigg, in commenting on this film, said: “My colleague Jason Di Rosso reckons that Australian directors are not very good at directing sex scenes. We lack a true erotic cinema. What do you think?”
He might be on to something, though I don’t think anyone would argue that the scenes in Black & White & Sex are meant to be sex scenes per se. I can’t think of any Australian films that have the kind of sensuality I’ve seen in some French films or some of Ang Lee’s work for example. The sex scenes in Elles looked real. Real doesn’t always mean erotic but it can. I think what Australians are good at is the flirty Diver Dan kind of schtick – but this is not erotic. There's something in the image of Australian men that refuses the erotic - it might be that you have to take women seriously and risk intimacy. This is at odds with the ways in which masculinity in Australia is traditionally presented on the screen. Maybe I will stop there.