Elles

Director: Malgorzata Szumowska
Year Released: 2011
Rating: 1.5

A journalist (Juliette Binoche) begins writing an article on two young prostitutes in Paris and somehow, in the process of documenting their perverse encounters with (mostly) scummy men, undergoes some kind of inner crisis and questions her "safe" "bourgeois" lifestyle (you know, husband, two kids, nice loft ... l'enfer, in other words). Though the dinner parties with her husband and his bland friends aren't exactly wild affairs, I'm not entirely confident getting penetrated by a wine bottle - or pissed on in the kitchen - is a fitting alternative (in one of the movie's more ludicrous moments, Szumowska cuts from said bottle fucking to Binoche flicking the bean on the floor ... très chic!). Shows tremendous sympathy for these whores and casts the ton of the blame on horny men - with their wives, porn collections and weird desires! - for procuring their services, although any kind of "large purpose" to the movie by Szumowska is quickly trumped by the gaudy, "sensational" scenes (gotta earn that NC-17, mon dieu!). The bodies are examined closer than the minds.