Philip French 

Elles – review

This Franco-Polish drama starring Juliette Binoche adds little to the debate about prostitution, writes Philip French
  
  

elles-juliette binoche
Juliette Binoche in Franco-Polish drama Elle: hasn't she seen Belle de jour? Photograph: Allstar/ Artificial Eye/ Sportsphoto Ltd Photograph: Allstar/ARTIFICIAL EYE/Sportsphoto Ltd

This smug Franco-Polish co-production stars Juliette Binoche at her most self-regarding as a lazy journalist researching an article for Elle on teenagers subsidising their higher education through prostitution. Naturally her troubled, comfortable middle-class existence is oppressive, and she's developed a giggly, huggy-feely relationship with two prostitutes, one Polish, the other French working-class. Through them she rediscovers the familiar feminist cliche that prostitution is a sexual transaction identical with, and possibly more honest than, marriage. Hasn't she seen Visconti's episode of Boccaccio '70, Buñuel's Belle de jour or Godard's Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle? One girl's graphic testimony includes a married client urinating all over her before serenading her with Prévert's "Autumn Leaves". Wouldn't "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" have been more appropriate?

 

Leave a Comment

Required fields are marked *

*

*