Elles is a French film about a journalist, Anne (the lovely Juliette Binoche), who is working on an article about two young women who have sex for money. Anne, who is experiencing commonplace problems at home (ornery teen son, husband who works all the time, etc), becomes fascinated by these young ladies and their ability to sleep with men double and triple their ages who treat them like..er...whores...without losing all dignity.
Elles doesn't take a clear stance on anything that happens in it. The thesis seems to be: Marriage can be good, but also sometimes it's hard. And prostitution can be bad and scary, but not all the time and you make a lot of money doing it.
Mind. Blown.
Seriously, Elles seemed, to me, to say nothing new or interesting about women and men, sexuality, marriage, or sex as a commodity. And perhaps that drifting sort of ambivalence is exactly the point of the film...which is fine, except that it doesn't make for a very compelling movie-going experience.
Instead of an intriguing look at prostitution or marriage or whatever, Elles was an unpleasant 96 minutes of nothing much at all. In the grand tradition of NC-17 movies, it was terribly unsexy--at least to me. Again, maybe that's the point. The men that the two girls (Charlotte and Alicja) service are old, not very attractive, and like to do things you can't show in an R-rated movie. But none of that offended or shocked me. What did elicit a response from me were the men who were genuine predators and sadists. The man who interviews Alicja as a potential renter of his apartment asks, in the middle of the interview, to see her breasts. When she reacts with shock, he raises his eyebrows and says "Do you know how expensive apartments in Paris are?" UGH. Then there's the client who performs a sex act on Charlotte that she specifically forbids, against her will, and causes her to cry.
Not too pleasant. It takes a lot to offend me, but I really have trouble with sexual violence against women in movies--especially when it's treated like no big thang*. Hey man, what's a little anal rape between friends, right? After all, that chick's a whore, so she's asking for it, right? UGH.
I do have to credit Elles for having the guts to not take a cliched and easy stance on prostitution. This is no "hooker with a heart of gold finds redemption" movie. Neither is it a "all sex work is empowering all the time" movie. But just because Elles doesn't have a typical prostitution narrative doesn't mean it says anything unique or thought-provoking.
I don't know what the director intended to say with Elles. All I know is that the movie was boring and unpleasant. An unpleasant or challenging movie can be worth seeing if it is interesting, and a pleasant but boring film can be nice, brainless entertainment. But a boring AND unpleasant movie? Non merci!
2.5 out of 5 stars
*Just to be clear: Boys Don't Cry, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Kill Bill, and any number of other movies do treat violence against women as if it's a big thang--something evil and disgusting and worth punishing. I would rather watch The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which features a brutal rape scene--but also Lisbeth Salander's revenge--than Elles, which feature a "milder" rape scene, but has zero commentary on that rape. Plus, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is boss.
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