Mes chères études

This French movie is based on a supposedly autobiographical story about a young and incredibly naive university student (Deborah Francois) who has to resort to prostitution to pay for her studies. This movie certainly doesn't glamorize prostitution from the female perspective as the girl's johns are presented as decidedly unattractive, pathetic, and borderline dangerous. It kind of DOES, however, tend to glamorize prostitution from the male perspective as Deborah Francois ("The Page Turner", "Female Agents") is very attractive and spends half the movie in various stages of undress. Moreover, she is (often pretty unbelievably) sweet and naive and probably nowhere near as cynical and hard-bitten as the kind of person who would be working as a prostitute in real-life. I'm sure most of the potential male audience of this movie can't honestly say they are watching this purely out of social concern that gorgeous but financially strapped French co-eds might be turning to prostitution (at least I know I can't).

There's always a danger in a film that, on one hand, is this sexually explicit, but is also, on the other hand, trying to generally condemn the sex trade. They've actually made a few films like this in America recently. "About Cherry" (with another unbelievably gorgeous model/actress, Ashley Hinshaw) runs into the same problems as this one. But both are vastly preferable to "On the Doll" where the decidedly PG-13 content manages to add to an already ridiculous and laughably unbelievable "expose" content. Only the obscure recent American indie film "Smile Pretty" successfully manages to be bold enough to tackle this kind of touchy subject without being so explicit as to slip into exploitation itself.

I certainly DON'T want to take anything away from Francoise, however, who is quite good in this (and it's certainly not HER fault she's far more naturally beautiful than any real prostitute probably would be). I don't know is she speaks English well, but if so she certain has the talent to compete with most young Hollywood actresses (who would never be brave enough to tackle a sordid role like this). She could be the next Marion Cotillard (who tackled a number of French films like this before becoming a rising star in Hollywood), or at least the next Ludivine Sagnier (a big star in France who has occasionally been successful outside it). She is definitely one to watch.

AKA: STUDENT SERVICES.

The story of the coed who has to compromise her values and sell herself to get by is not a new one. But here it is told with a certain vive and lifted by the lead Deborah Francois. Yes, she is lovely naked and spends a great deal of the film undressed, but it serves the plot well as she moves among men she meets online. She finds some encounters titillating, but finds most repulsive either in the moment or on reflection. After an innocent foray into selling her company, posing for photos and quickie sex, she gets gets in deeper, kinkier and caught up in a cycle from which she struggles to escape.

Mes chères etudes – Student Services – CATCH IT (B-) Based upon Mes chères études (My expensive studies in English) is a 2008, an autobiographical book by an anonymous author known as "Laura D.", who is a modern language student at a Paris university. The book has drawn national attention in France with its controversial contents, in which the author claimed that she had to go into prostitution to financially support her studies. (Wiki) French movies are sexually expletive and they don't hesitate in holding back. This goes for this one as well. It's at times very disturbing a young girl doing things with old man, getting raped, message or just lying naked. Anyways Déborah François did a great job because it didn't occur to me for a second that she is just an actress. The thing about the movie I didn't like that it's slow and spend too much time in the bedroom at times.

Under the title "Student Services", I watched this film, not realizing it was a made-for-TV-movie based upon a true story.

The actress who portrays the main character, Laura, acquits herself fine. She plays a college student who has trouble paying her bills, so she turns to adult on-line ads to find meet men who will pay her for sexual favors.

The film is not erotic. Laura, for the most part, detests what she does.

The film may have been designed to put forth a political point of view--that too many students have financial problems, so they turn to illegal activities. Someone who lives in France might understand a political solution to this French problem, but others probably will not.

It is certainly no documentary. And it does not try to be.

As a drama, it offers little that is new to the genre, and Laura's path is marked by detours and confusing behavior, defusing the drama.

The movie is a bit strange and portrays the girl as very naive It starts out with a student fainting in class, turns out she haven't been eating in a while cause of poor economy, from there on the main story starts. After seeking advice from what I believe is the school Counsellor whom basically tell her to sue her parents or get more jobs. Than she somehow get the idea of trying prostitution. (At this point I sort of miss and explanation as to why she choose it so fast) It supposed to be a one time thing, but soon she spends all the money and she need to do it all over again. You get to see how she spends her hard earned money, while she's spending them. Dinner out with her friends paying for their drinks etc All the while you get to see these small cash signs in the air with a price tag of what the item cost her, It was and interesting way to illustrate how money just fly away sometimes. When you've been broke for a log time, you often fantasies about what you gonna spend all the money on when you get on the up and up. But once you get there you soon realize easy come easy go. So soon she needs money again and one client leads to another and another and so on and so forth. One thing that struck me as odd though, was that with every client she usually just lay there like a corpse while they do their thing. I may not know much about prostitution and the life of the average hooker, but I assume when you pay for sex you want some spark in it, however fake that spark must be. I'm pretty sure nobody pays a hundred Euros for a girl to lay there playing dead while you hammering away at her. Not unless you got some weird fantasy about them being dead, I'm pretty sure they would expect her to fake it at least Also the average client was usually men in their 50; it would have been nice with some diversities Another odd thing with the main character is that she seems to get more stupid/naive for each client she takes on. Which is usually quite the opposite of what normally happens in that line of work There are also bits and pieces that doesn't really go anywhere, which is a bit confusing But all in all not a bad movie,