Gefallene Engel

À l'aventure's beginning is pretty dreadful. We meet two female coworkers sitting in a park. One responsible one, the other out of it, who just stares in front of her and doesn't even look her friend in the eyes. The loony one, Sandrine, isn't satisfied in bed by her husband and admits to him that she cheats--by pleasuring herself! The shock! Eventually she quits her job and becomes more adventurous. She picks up a stranger in a café and sleeps with him. He's a psychologist. We get a couple more episodes of her in the park. An older guy sits next to her and starts pondering about life, about the stars, about astrophysics, about life. His thoughts at first are pretty ordinary but become deeper and more interesting in time.

The psychologist introduces Sandrine to a friend/patient who tells them that she likes being slapped on the butt by some guy. It's ecstatic for her. She invites them to a butt slapping session. The guy introduces them to another one his girl, Mina.

The girls who become interested in psychology because of a speech the psychologist gives on hysteria- where repressed psychological events manifest themselves physically, and now want to see the him perform hypnosis on them all. During the session all three girls become aroused and enjoy each other.

Later he does another session on Mina who sees a nun experiencing religious ecstasy and levitating. Now things become interesting...

À l'aventure is the first movie by Brisseau that has an interesting story. But he doesn't take advantage of it. It is still plagued by endless dialog, pointless scenes, behaviors that make no sense. The old guy turns out to have been a physics teacher who went to the East and ended up being a cab driver. He's more or less a guru figure to Sandrine even though he doesn't have anything conclusive to teach.

The issue/question of the female orgasm is something the French can't seem to get their minds around. Here too we are treated to conversations that belong in a movie about victorian times.

Carole Brana who plays Sandrine is just gorgeous in a regular sort of way, not some fake bombshell. The erotic scenes are few, short, and not as stunning as the ones in The Exterminating Angels. Unfortunate since sexual pleasure is at the center of this movie. But in turn, it gives you something to think about. The idea that the search for ultimate pleasure could be related to mysticism is provocative and intriguing. À l'aventure has a fascinating story to tell that deserved a fresher more daring approach than what Brisseau gives us here.

"What is life, what is pleasure, what is love?" is asking the man on the bench (Etienne Chicot) towards the end of the film. Really, who can answer? And I would add myself: why people get married? Some only for two months, as another character in the film ? We have many scenes worthy of a porn film with explicit sex, very nice indeed. And we got on the other hand scenes of dialogue between the main character, Sandrine, and all the other characters, in which she tries to find answers to the toughest questions of the humanity. Well played, a little boring, but captivating. Carole Brana, Nadia Chibani and Lise Bellynck, like Three Graces, are very convincing in the roles of three women seeking at all costs the Absolute Ecstasy (through mega-orgasms).

If you see the directors work as a trilogy (first of them being released 2002) and this being the last part of that very loosely based trilogy, then I don't think there is much arguing, that he seems to have saved the best for last. The story seems more coherent, though the trademarks are still there. By that I don't mean the beautiful women, but the talking about everything. Trying to understand feelings or the world in general I suppose.

Not that you'll get answers that are satisfying (no pun intended, other scenes in this might be very satisfying), but the movie tries to get into the head of our main actress. The talk about freedom and boredom/routine may challenge you to think about a few things. Maybe it won't, but that is the clear intention of the director. The supernatural element is kept low this time around, but you'll get a fair share of that too. An (erotic) adventure you may want to take

A festival blurb declares: "A sexually unfulfilled young woman embarks on a series of graphic erotic encounters and becomes involved with a student of psychoanalysis who offers to put her under hypnosis. Yes, the notorious Jean-Claude Brisseau, director of 'The Exterminating Angels' and 'Secret Things,' is back with his latest provocation. Another idiosyncratic philosophical meditation on the enigmas of female sexuality, it features the director's latest discovery, Carole Brana. Pretentious smut for high-brows, a dirty old man's fantasies writ large, or a profound and daring exploration of society's sexual taboos? You decide."

It's easy enough to decide that this is not "pretentious smut for highbrows" (do highbrows like smut?) or a "dirty old man's fantasies writ large." It is far too beautiful and intelligent and thoughtful for that. It's an odd film, which combines S/M, religious ecstasy, and some basic information about cosmology in an attractive package. Perhaps only a French filmmaker could have made this. And only a man still conventional in his notions of sexual roles could put lovely nude women on display having sex with each other and masturbating with men in charge and think it a bold exploration of new possibilities.

'À l'aventure' begins like a New Wave film, with conversation and random meetings. It might be early Eric Rohmer, for a little while, anyway; not for long. Sandrine (Carole Brana) sits on a bench talking to her friend Sophie (Lise Bellynck), and an older man (Étienne Chicot) joins them and makes wise reflections. What he says later influences her. She is about to come into an inheritance. She offends her boyfriend Fred (Jocelyn Quivrin) by masturbating in the next room after they have had sex. He says she's become a "slut" and very soon afterward he moves out.

Sandrine strikes up a conversation at a café with Greg (Arnaud Binard), a good looking man with books on psychology and hypnosis. It turns out he is training to be a psychiatrist. And he experiments on his patients. Sandrine immediately finds him attractive and says so. They go straight to his bedroom.

Later, Greg introduces Sandrine to several women and she also meets a long-haired architect and decorator, Jérome (Frédéric Aspisi), who's into heightening women's orgasms by playing their S/M master. Eventually Greg takes some of the women on a risky trip to ecstatic experience. All the while Sandrine keeps meeting the older man on the bench, and eventually at his cabin out in the country. He is a taxi driver but also studied meditation in India and taught physics. He outlines the rough history of the cosmos to Sandrine and gives a simplified explanation of Relativity.

The women are beautiful, especially the radiant Carole Brana. As the "Old Man," Étienne Chicot speaks with resonant authority and a healthy touch of humor. It is true that Brisseau's scenes of women having sex go further than usual; when men are shown, it's quite conventional. Greg and Jerome just watch. Poor Fred's performance is deemed unsatisfying. Even the shots of landscape around the Old Man's cabin are lovely. Watching the film is soothing and aesthetically pleasurable. At the end, the Old Man proclaims Greg's experiments foolish and risky; but other than a paranormal internal storm after a woman's reliving of a saint's spiritual enlightenment, there are no consequences.

The problem with this pleasant and in some ways daring film is that it is far too often more expository than dramatic. No matter how good looking the people and the settings are, it's hard to shake off the impression that one is being lectured -- and not on a very sophisticated level. Nothing is imparted that one would not get in elementary courses or basic reading in psychology, cosmology, religious experience, and physics. The wisest advice comes from Sandrine's mother (Michele Larue). She counsels her to go back to Fred and tells her she's lucky that instead of having boredom with a young lover ahead, she will discover love for a man she doesn't like enough yet. Convention, she says, is necessary. But as the film ends, Sandrine hasn't discovered that yet. The film barely touches on the possible negative consequences of a life that's more exploratory than practical. Brisseau is 65. Is this where French baby boomers are at?

'À l'aventure' has been optioned by IFC. It opens in France April 1, 2009. It was shown in February 2009 as part of the 'Film Comment' Selects series at Lincoln Center, New York.

In Europe, we are suffering from the pressure of the Christian upbringing (which actually is a mainstream on a specific direction where the body and the sensations are not important, but only the soul). This movie finds the time to bind the both in a up to date search for meaning, a challenging endeavor, considering the deep routed structure of our culture.

The puritans and the erotic movie lovers alike will see in this movie an erotic exposure with long philosophical intermissions. Beautifully crafted and bringing an equilibrium between two parts, the movie represents an inner search of Sandrine for finding the sense of living, which, as in all hero stories, is not so obvious.