Elles (2011)

It's a film based around a journalist writing an article about student prostitution and her life as a housewife and it touches on the lives of two prostitutes. It's a strangely intimate story complemented by beautiful music and very erotic scenes. Miss Binoche is superb with all her usual beautiful nuances and command of the screen.

It's a film about the universe of a woman's soul and it's rather compelling. I thought it was great and it lingers with you, its inconclusive and that makes you draw your own conclusions, so the film will be different for everyone. I drew we are all alone and no-one really knows us.

Fmovies: Elles is the first movie I've seen that does nothing for the conviction behind its original premise--feminism. On the contrary; it reinforces the notion that women are sex objects with erotic capital, and concludes with the lead character desperate for regression.

In this fifth feature by Polish director Małgorzata Szumowska, lead character Anne (Juliette Binoche) ultimately conforms to gender roles dictated by society: mother, wife, house wife, cook, journalist, bed partner, fellatio provider.

Set against picturesque Paris; we see Anne living in modern, hectic existence with a husband and two troubled teenagers. When her family departs for work and school in the morning, Anne redirects her energy towards freelance journalism for Elle magazine. She is midway through an article about young women in the sex industry and two students are being anonymously profiled.

Here, Szumowska combines two narrative structures: interview flashbacks where Charlotte and Alicja recount how they fell into sex work; subjective perspective as Anne receives new insights from the girls. As the plot unfolds, we notice a gradual change in Anne's attitude towards sexual freedom and a glaring difference emerging from her private and professional lives.

Charlotte (Anaïs Demoustier) is a sweet-natured college student struggling to make ends meet. Unable to cope with part-time work demanding long and irregulars hours; she is drawn to the lucrative income and flexible hours. Alicja(Joanna Kulig) is Polish and a new character to the city; without sufficient funds from her family, securing basic food and lodging are left to her own devices.

Both women are typical victims with sob stories: they fell into the industry out of limited financial means, but emerge sexually liberated and continue out of want. By virtue of proximity; Anne bonds with Alicja and frustrations with her own circumstances grow, culminating in neurotic epiphany during a dinner party at home.

Some controversial films (Irreversible, I Stand Alone) depict graphic scenes because they are designed to enhance complexity in their narratives, Elles isn't one of them. Its original synopsis promises women's empowerment, freedom and liberation--but aesthetic patterns say otherwise. There are explicit imageries depicting sexual encounters by Charlotte and Alicjia executed without coherence to the emphasis on social-emotional variables claimed by Szumowska.

Sexual revolution occurred more than fifty years ago; yet the film is set in one of the most developed cities among metropolitan states. Granted things are still plausible within the context of helpless migrants--it speaks for the level of reality Elles operates on. That characterizations reinforce not only stereotypes, but misinformation surrounding the "bleak and reluctant lives" of sex workers further disconnects to the point of retrogression.

The range of "secrets" explored in Elles are extraordinarily obvious, narrow and misdirected; honest performances are also stymied by distasteful direction. Joseph Kosma's Les feuilles mortes (literally "The Dead Leaves")may have you humming away in irony when the credits finally begin to roll.

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The mainstream middle-class person decides to investigate some aspect of demi-monde living, in this case prostitution, and finds herself being caught up in its irresistible fascination and reconsidering how she views her own identity. Did the filmmakers really think that there was something here that an audience hadn't seen before? With minor variations it's been done with murder, mental illness, gambling and drug addiction -- a half-dozen such films come to mind easily -- not to mention alternate lifestyles that may not be wrong in themselves but are nonetheless labeled "fringe-dwelling," so what exactly is new here?

Juliette's character says she doesn't drink, but suddenly relents and shortly afterward is drinking everyone else under the table. Someone at the production end apparently just assumed that he/she understood the teatotaler's mindset and had the character flip abruptly on a moral resolve of this magnitude. If, rather, the character is a recovering problem drinker or even alcoholic, should not this little character detail have taken priority in what's really wrong with her life?

Fantasy sequence where main character imagines herself surrounded by all the male customers described by the prostitutes she interviewed is blatant and way too concrete.

One could call the film character-driven perhaps: that these actors in these roles seem to have plausibility in being family and/or forming friendships. If the film were genuinely about something the audience needed to see then these would be the actors we'd like to hire.

Elles fmovies. We've seen similar films dealing with the subject of student prostitution, so when coming to view this, it's a tired watch. It's been all done before. The movie starts where we're further into the story, where journalist, Binoche, who carries the film in a great if bold performance, interviews two young beautiful girls, selling and indulging in sex with older men, kind of bringing much similarity, I would say to that later Art house film, Young And Beautiful, which I haven't yet seen. There are some truly hot sex scenes in this film, from our two lasses, one featuring a middle aged guy getting into Demoustier's lacey panties, and boy, does she want it. Slowly disassociating herself from her family, as well as having problems with the fridge door, Binoche immerses and loses herself into this life, becoming good friends with both girls, causing her to privately masturbate, and give hubby something he hasn't had in a while, where the film suddenly ends. The films fault, like Binoche losing herself, the film loses it's intentions, handling of story, where the movie shallowy touches on the subject, and doesn't go into enough depth of the girl's backgrounds, like why they do it, and what really has led em to this point, where meeting mommy of one of the girls, was at least something. But the film gets more caught up in the sex between call girl and client, which is the film's real failing. This was angrily disappointing in one sense, as the end credits rolled. It's Binoche's film, though. Watch it for her, the film's only strong savior.

In the enjoyable but ultimately silly film, a wealthy Parisian journalist interview a couple of students who are earning their way through college working as prostitutes. Expecting to pity them, she finds herself envying (and fancying) them; the film makes the point that interviewer and interviewees alike inhabit a world that is full of rich men and luxurious surroundings, but the working girls have a measure of sexual excitement and control lacking in the married life. Now I can accept that not every prostitute is drug addicted, enslaved and so on: but it's hard to believe in the romantic and glamorous way their lives are depicted. Interestingly, this is a film directed by a woman, and starring three women as well: clearly the stereotype of the high-class hooker has enduring appeal to both sexes.

In Paris, Elle Magazine's journalist Anne (Juliette Binoche) is assigned to write a four-page article about prostitution. Anne is a middle class mother and housewife that lives a routine life in a comfortable apartment with her husband Patrick (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) and her two sons, the teenager Florent (François Civil) and the boy Stéphane (Pablo Beugnet).

Anne contacts the college students and call-girls Charlotte "Lola" (Anaïs Demoustier) and Alicja (Joanna Kulig) and she interviews them. They tell details of their sexual experience with their clients, most of them married and aged enough to be their fathers, who are seeking kinky sex that they do not do with their wives.

In the beginning, Anne is shocked with the humiliations and perversions that the girls are submitted to keep their lifestyles. But soon she realizes how tedious her life is and she fantasizes sexual encounters with their clients. Further, she changes her opinion and attitude towards the girls that have good time in their lives with their independence. But in the end, she wears the society mask and returns to her routine life with her family.

"Elles" is a sensual and erotic drama with the theme of prostitution that has been already explored in other movies. The greatest difference is Juliette Binoche, who is perfect in the role of a bourgeois woman that lives in conflict with herself and her family after discovering a different world through her contact with young whores. The contrast of their lives is well used in the screenplay that alternates the girls having sex with clients and Juliette Binoche cooking, washing and cleaning at home. Inclusive it seems that this actress burned her hand indeed while cooking.

There are scenes very explicit with the sexy and gorgeous French actress Anaïs Demoustier and Polish actress Joanna Kulig that are exploitation and certainly will unpleased many viewers. Last but not the least, the music score with classic is another plus in this movie. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Elles"