Secret Things

Nathalie (Coralie Revel) is an exotic dancer, and Sandrine (Sabrina Seyvecou) is a bartender. They get fired by their scumbag boss and move in together where Nathalie teaches Sandrine how to use her femininity to capture men. They devise a plan to move up in the corporate world using sex to succeed.

They both get hired at the same bank and set their sights on Christophe Barnay (Fabrice Deville), as he will inherit the firm one day. She has no idea how twisted he truly is.

First, Sandrine gets a position under Delacroix (Delacroix), and uses her charms to completely captivate him. She gets Nathalie moved to the office, and soon they are a menage a trois for one night, as Christophe catches them and dismisses Delacroix, while promoting the both of them to higher positions.

Sandrine becomes involved with Christophe and his sister in another menage a trois. This leads to marriage and an amazing ending after his father dies.

Brilliant cinematography and music, and a fascinating story.

The French do lyricism and erotica well, maybe it's the accents or the actors; more likely, the language itself. Mind you, had this been Demi Moore and Julia Roberts frolicking about, I'd have laughed myself silly; as it is, the two female leads - especially Sabrina Seyvecou - successfully show how powerful a currency sex appeal is. It begins as a feminist fable - the two girls thrown together at a strip club, consorting, exhibiting and daring one another to ever greater public displays of pleasurable posturing between hands and genitals -supposedly, in the belief that, with training, Sandrine can get an office job and sleep her way to the top.

Now, had this been tongue in cheek - and I'm not saying whose tongue, in whose cheek - had M Jean-Claude Brisseau, the director, used a lighter or defter touch, the sensual side would have melted our Haagen-Dazs and there could still have been a thought-provoking moral aspect, reflecting the power of, well, the femme fatale.

As it is, the film gets lost towards the end, implying that the playboy office boss is the real manipulator and the girls are mere pawns. The joyous, impish scenes when the two women dare one another to surreptitiously remove their underwear whilst seated in the subway, are long forgotten. Thankfully, Sabrina Seyvecou's natural charms are sufficient to blot out any significant disappointment. She could conquer my office any time.

I think the Haagen-Dazs has left a stain. At least, I think it's the Haagen-Dazs...

The opening scene in Secret Things slams you with its voyeuristic impact suggesting that this is a soft-porn exploitation in someone's private bedroom; however, the scene turns out to be an autoerotic exhibition onstage in a bar in Paris. Nathalie (Coralie Revel) is a gorgeous exotic dancer headlining in a dank bar in Paris. She is fired after a tiff with the calloused owner together with a naïve bartender Sandrine (Sabrina Seyvecou). The two ladies vow not to be used by men again. Nathalie encourages Sandrine to loosen her sexual inhibitions to get more out of life. She instructs Sandrine how to awaken her sexuality both in the bedroom and at public places such as a tunnel in the Metro. The pair decides to room together and scheme on how they will better their lot in life by using men to climb the ladder of success and become free spirits.

After the ladies land a job at the same firm, they plot on how to advance their positions using their sensuality as a manipulative tool. Nathalie quickly maneuvers a job as personnel assistant and Sandrina is now an executive secretary. Sandrina, currently an apt pupil in sexual prowess, manages to manipulate her superiors until she finally lands a position as secretary to the main supervisor. This formerly monogamous married man, who is twice Sandrine's age, falls madly in love with her to his detriment as they secretly hump their way across the screen both on the job and at other more acceptable venues. Sandrine flagrantly uses him to advance her career, yet plans on dumping him once she conquers the young CEO, a handsome and clever womanizer.

As the affair with her boss hardens, she begins to back off and he becomes more desperate to possess her. Nathalie on the other hand has fallen hard for an unrevealed lover, who apparently has dumped her. Sandrine attempts to console Nathalie and ultimately winds up in the sack with her. Now the plot begins to deteriorate as the newfound freedom they were both relishing begins to erode. Trapped by the amorous attention of her boss, Sandrine now imposes upon him to promote Nathalie to their office where they eventually indulge in a ménage à trois. This scenario further crumbles when the three are discovered in hot embrace in the restroom by the young stud of a CEO, who is even more Machiavellian than they are.

The plot now totally disintegrates into a banquet of ruthlessness, group sex, lesbian sex, three-way sex, and masturbation. Our heroines, now suffering much more than they did before they decided upon their quest to manipulate men, go along with the bizarre program foisted upon them. The story unfolds into some off the wall twists and unexpected ironies. However, when mixed with the continual bombardment of sexual exploitation, it adds little to the theme of the story. The film appears to take away more than it provides.

The first three quarters of the film are fun and interesting as we observe the women taking charge of their lives and maneuvering through office politics. The movie eventually falls apart dropping to the level of a soft-core porn movie, without rhyme or reason until the plot regresses to something secondary to the sexploitations. The director, Jean-Claude Brisseau presents quite a banquet of sexuality, turning on both men and women audiences throughout the film, while maintaining a nice balance of story and visual indulgence. This picture, in French with English subtitles, is deftly crafted so that you easily forget that you are reading everything instead of listening to the dialogue. Nathalie is so stunning and sexual on the screen that it is by itself well worth the price of admission. It is too bad the story falls apart in the third act; nevertheless, I would still recommend it for its visual arousing energy and remarkable premise.

A film about manipulative, mean-spirited and, at times, downright nasty people - and I absolutely loved it.

It's so refreshing to see a truly adult film these days. Not to mention, a film that doesn't just say it is erotic, it goes ahead and proves it. This is not a film for prudes, for those who are easily offended. But for adults who are willing to see some frank discussion about sex and some deliciously devious sexual politics, this film provides wonderful entertainment.

"Choses secrètes" is enormously entertaining with two thoroughly captivating leads. Sabrina Seyvecou, who turns in a spellbinding performance, has a sort of Heather Grahamish innocence and sexiness to her and, along with Coralie Revel, provides some of the most titillating scenes seen in a mainstream movie in many years.

There really aren't any good/wholesome characters in this film. But that's OK. (I suppose Cadene qualifies as a nice chap, but he's a minor character.) Because the cunning of the two women is so absolutely engrossing that you're quickly drawn into their wicked world. Watching them use people for their own ends and not quite knowing who is manipulating whom is one of the many charms of this sensual and exciting film.

The film comes apart toward the end. Unravels a bit, especially when writer/director Jean-Claude Brisseau resorts to awfully heavy-handed (and needless) symbolism. There's also a superfluous orgy scene that comes out of nowhere. I wish Brisseau would have come up with an original, atypical, less conventional denouement for his story.

If you like the works of Neil LaBute - "The Shape of Things," "Your Friends and Neighbors" and "In the Company of Men" - you should appreciate and enjoy "Choses secrètes."

[S P O I L E R S]

Either because they were too shocking, or too bad, or just too French, Jean-Claude Brisseau's previous nine films (some just done for TV) haven't made it to the US. Choses secrètes (Secret Things) is having some limited distribution here. The film seduces initially with its intelligence and its elegant look; then it betrays us with tendentiousness, tedium, and numbing excess. If you loved Luchino Visconti's The Damned or Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salò, you will have to see this. If you respected Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, you may want to consider Choses secrètes, which some think does its moral consideration of sex and its orgy scenes better.

Whereas Dangerous Liaisons (the Choderlos de Laclos classic as well as its various film adaptations) involves the plot of a man and a woman to demolish a powerful and wicked female, this film involves two women out to get men in general. Brisseau's Nathalie (Coralie Revel), a stripper, coaches Sandrine (Sabrina Seyvecou), a barmaid, on how they can both become powerful through exploiting their own sexual daring. They've just been fired - literally thrown out on the street - from the club where they both work for refusing to have sex with customers afterward. Nathalie persuades the naïve, penniless Sandrine to move in with her and next day outlines her plan for the two of them to conquer the Paris business world.

This is all to be done through sex, and from scene one, there's plenty of masturbation -- orgasms, real or faked, come as often as explosions in action flicks -- and plenty of nudity, but only female in each case. Nathalie's simplistic, rather old-fashioned rule is that if they can give themselves pleasure, they need never be enslaved to any man. The typically French rationality of Nathalie's exposition of her plan undercuts the obvious softcore aspects of the film - for a while, that is.

And so does Choses secrètes' splendid appearance: the beauty of the two young women is set off by handsome cinematography and a generous use of sumptuous, richly colored drapery that makes the décor a pleasure to look at. One wishes American filmmakers could generate effects of taste and elegance with such simple means. But there is more to cinema than the visuals and this movie begins to seem little more than a Vogue shoot.

Wilder and prettier: that's the two girls' selling point. On the strength of a certain provocative appeal, we're to believe, they're hired at a major financial corporation, Nathalie in personnel, Sandrine in the top administrative office. Again the film's seductive: the sudden rise may be far fetched, but you want to see what happens.

Sandrine follows Nathalie's instructions and rejects a younger executive who wants to marry her: a big mistake; but she sticks to the program. Instead of dating the sincere young man, Sandrine seduces Delacroix, the firm's married, bored fifty-year-old (but handsome and lean) manager. Delacroix falls hopelessly in love. Sandrine fakes everything. Nathalie ignores her own rules and has a secret lover who hurts her. We have to guess who he is; but it's not hard: we know that Christophe (Fabrice Deville), the aged, ill boss's son, who's heir to the corporate fortune, is a gorgeous seducer who's literally driven women to commit suicide right before his eyes - and enjoyed watching. Christophe has a preposterous back-story to explain his moral emptiness.

Things go rapidly downhill when this monster of evil begins to dominate the scene. It doesn't help that the slightly corpulent Christophe looks more like last year's model than a real person. Looks and sound effects have started to take over Choses secrètes at this point. There haven't been such scenes of elegant depravity since Visconti. But there are too many orgies with Bach and Vivaldi masses played at top volume for background. It's over the top: the film self-destructs before one's eyes. And the old-fashioned moral tale - replete with blatant titillation over the `hell' it depicts - morphs into an increasingly tedious and surreal scenario. There's an angel of annihilation, a face transfixed by death, a bird of prey pecking at a bleeding chest: we're on the wilder fringes of the French imagination. Cocteau did this sort of thing much better.

In a final scene several years later Nathalie and Sandrine, now on separate paths, have a brief final meeting. One has a wholesome life and the other has become a pampered princess: using a stretch limo to suggest the latter's wealth was a genuinely bad idea. Both women look exactly the same as ever: like this year's models. The movie has completely disintegrated. There is nothing left to care about.

But I did love the drapery in Nathalie's bedroom. It promised better things.

For an infinitely smarter and ultimately more chic French film about love games, if you don't want to go to the source, de Laclos' Dangerous Liaisons and its film versions, rent a copy of Benoît Jacquot's School of Flesh (L'École de la chair), with Isabelle Huppert at her most sublimely disdainful. Nathalie and Sandrine combined aren't fit to dust her shoes.