Fun fact: if you go to see a Polish movie in theatres (or a Polish-French movie), you are basically guaranteed to see at least one Polish person there. And I don't mean just me, I mean someone in addition to me.
This is in some sense exactly what you'd expect from a (Polish-)French movie about prostitutes, but it's actually quite well done. Juliette Binoche plays a journalist doing a feature on working girls for a magazine. The film combines scenes from her life with scenes from theirs, along with some footage of their interviews. The two girls, one French and one Polish, are kind of an interesting contrast. There's a way in which the acts that the Polish one engages in seem rather more debasing, but she also seems a lot more into it all than the French one, who is more of the sweet and submissive type. And she seems to get humiliated and abused more. I'm not sure if the film is intentionally skewing things in that way or if that's just how it came across to me, but it was an interesting contrast. The Polish girl seems to have a kind of strange genius for becoming embodying other people's fantasies.
Meanwhile, Binoche's home life is sort of grim in that somewhat cliche bourgeois sort of way; successful, sex-less, somewhat neurotic career woman with a teenage child who openly disrespects her and a husband she resents. This would be annoyingly predictable, but it's done with a somewhat light touch, and somehow, it works.
Overall, while it's kind of cliche and predictable in some ways, there's also something kind of interesting and original in the way that it's done. It's definitely not a must-see, but it's not a bad movie either.
This is in some sense exactly what you'd expect from a (Polish-)French movie about prostitutes, but it's actually quite well done. Juliette Binoche plays a journalist doing a feature on working girls for a magazine. The film combines scenes from her life with scenes from theirs, along with some footage of their interviews. The two girls, one French and one Polish, are kind of an interesting contrast. There's a way in which the acts that the Polish one engages in seem rather more debasing, but she also seems a lot more into it all than the French one, who is more of the sweet and submissive type. And she seems to get humiliated and abused more. I'm not sure if the film is intentionally skewing things in that way or if that's just how it came across to me, but it was an interesting contrast. The Polish girl seems to have a kind of strange genius for becoming embodying other people's fantasies.
Meanwhile, Binoche's home life is sort of grim in that somewhat cliche bourgeois sort of way; successful, sex-less, somewhat neurotic career woman with a teenage child who openly disrespects her and a husband she resents. This would be annoyingly predictable, but it's done with a somewhat light touch, and somehow, it works.
Overall, while it's kind of cliche and predictable in some ways, there's also something kind of interesting and original in the way that it's done. It's definitely not a must-see, but it's not a bad movie either.
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