House of Pleasures

A languorous and mature French prostitution drama, Bertrand Bonello's House of Pleasures is set at L'Apollonide, an upscale brothel in Paris at the end of the 19th-century. Although the Madame, Marie-France (Noemie Lvovsky), is not overtly cruel, she does treat her girls—who never go outside alone, lest they be arrested for soliciting—as human property, selling or renting them out as required. The women, many without detailed backstories, seem fatalistically resigned to sex-slavery—barely sustaining hopes of paying off their debts or winding up in marriage/long-term concubinage to wealthy clients—with some dosing on opium, but all basically needing each other for emotional support. Talk among visiting men touches upon the latest work by H.G. Wells, the Dreyfus affair, and, in indirect fashion, Victor Hugo's novel The Man Who Laughs. It seems to be in imitation of the latter that one man suddenly, horrifically, carves up Jewish prostitute Madeleine's (Alice Barnole) face into a permanent, grotesque grin, and she consequently begins to draw a more twisted clientele. One could well compare this film to Tod Browning's damned-in-its-day cult classic Freaks, which features a similar ensemble structure, revenge subplot, and equal discomfort and fascination over social outcasts. Recommended. (C. Cassady)