The School of Flesh

Benoit Jacquot's tale of a career-minded fashion designer's (Isabelle Huppert) improbable fascination with a hunky male hustler (Vincent Martinez) suggests that both parties need the obsessive relationship desperately, but--to the audience--it's never entirely clear why. Although the hustler's self-loathing is well-handled, Jacquot's direction keeps us too distanced from Huppert's emotions, maintaining an academic detachment that makes it hard to understand why Martinez (who resembles a slightly more swarthy Joaquin Phoenix) is the object of her desire. This isn't the first film to posit an unlikely man's attractiveness to women--the entire Woody Allen oeuvre comes to mind--but that doesn't make it any easier to accept Martinez as the paradigm for masculine magnetism. Both central characters are intriguing enough to follow, but mutual self-degradation is hard to watch in a vacuum. Obsession only makes for great drama if the "why" is as important as the "what"...or, in the case of The School of Flesh, the "why him?" Optional. (S. Renshaw)