Elas

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.

We've seen similar films dealing with the subject of student prostitution, so when coming to view this, it's a tired watch. It's been all done before. The movie starts where we're further into the story, where journalist, Binoche, who carries the film in a great if bold performance, interviews two young beautiful girls, selling and indulging in sex with older men, kind of bringing much similarity, I would say to that later Art house film, Young And Beautiful, which I haven't yet seen. There are some truly hot sex scenes in this film, from our two lasses, one featuring a middle aged guy getting into Demoustier's lacey panties, and boy, does she want it. Slowly disassociating herself from her family, as well as having problems with the fridge door, Binoche immerses and loses herself into this life, becoming good friends with both girls, causing her to privately masturbate, and give hubby something he hasn't had in a while, where the film suddenly ends. The films fault, like Binoche losing herself, the film loses it's intentions, handling of story, where the movie shallowy touches on the subject, and doesn't go into enough depth of the girl's backgrounds, like why they do it, and what really has led em to this point, where meeting mommy of one of the girls, was at least something. But the film gets more caught up in the sex between call girl and client, which is the film's real failing. This was angrily disappointing in one sense, as the end credits rolled. It's Binoche's film, though. Watch it for her, the film's only strong savior.

Although directed and co-written by a Polish woman (Malgorzata Szumowska), this French-language film has so many of the ingredients that we associate with Gallic art house movies: it is slow and ponderous, the narrative is fractured, there is smoking, drinking, and eating, there is sex but much of it is sordid or sad or sadistic, there are scenes which are simply inexplicable, and the conclusion is utterly unresolved and even senseless.

Juliette Binoche plays Anne, a journalist with "Elle" researching an article on how students fund their education through prostitution. Apparently she only interviews - repeatedly - two students: the French girl Charlotte (Anaïs Demoustier) and the Polish girl Alicja (Joanna Kulig). Neither hooker seems as unsettled by the lifestyle she has chosen as Anne appears unbalanced by the interviews. It is all rather disjointed and unsatisfactory and the only reason for seeing the film is the wonderful work of the ever-impressive Binoche.

According to some reports, great many female students in France financed their studies from prostitution. This film starts from this report. Juliette Binoche plays the journalist who interviews two of these girls. Many times.

She tries to analyze it all from a cold professional view, but finds that she is the one who changes and maybe also gets analyzed. The girls tell her they are abused sometimes, but Binoche is the one who takes the biggest injuries.

Interesting film about "Western morals" declining more and more in all ways, since we're not interesting in sharing profits like we used to. But the film is a little cold and and analyzing, just like a professional journalist should be.

In Paris, Elle Magazine's journalist Anne (Juliette Binoche) is assigned to write a four-page article about prostitution. Anne is a middle class mother and housewife that lives a routine life in a comfortable apartment with her husband Patrick (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) and her two sons, the teenager Florent (François Civil) and the boy Stéphane (Pablo Beugnet).

Anne contacts the college students and call-girls Charlotte "Lola" (Anaïs Demoustier) and Alicja (Joanna Kulig) and she interviews them. They tell details of their sexual experience with their clients, most of them married and aged enough to be their fathers, who are seeking kinky sex that they do not do with their wives.

In the beginning, Anne is shocked with the humiliations and perversions that the girls are submitted to keep their lifestyles. But soon she realizes how tedious her life is and she fantasizes sexual encounters with their clients. Further, she changes her opinion and attitude towards the girls that have good time in their lives with their independence. But in the end, she wears the society mask and returns to her routine life with her family.

"Elles" is a sensual and erotic drama with the theme of prostitution that has been already explored in other movies. The greatest difference is Juliette Binoche, who is perfect in the role of a bourgeois woman that lives in conflict with herself and her family after discovering a different world through her contact with young whores. The contrast of their lives is well used in the screenplay that alternates the girls having sex with clients and Juliette Binoche cooking, washing and cleaning at home. Inclusive it seems that this actress burned her hand indeed while cooking.

There are scenes very explicit with the sexy and gorgeous French actress Anaïs Demoustier and Polish actress Joanna Kulig that are exploitation and certainly will unpleased many viewers. Last but not the least, the music score with classic is another plus in this movie. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Elles"