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Displaying all 18 wall posts
msmichel
22Mar13
Szumowska came into her own with this picture and gave us a strong spirted work that provided a work in which a bourgeois woman working as a journalist for vogue suddenly calls her self image and view of prostitution both into question while looking into students who prostitue themselves to pay for school. Script doesn't go deep enough but Binoche adds a deeper level with her magnificient performance.
Dermo
20Jan13
Nothing new to say here, but it is well acted and directed. The use of explicit imagery of the girls work is a mistake - Why do we see their sexual exchanges and not those of Anne and her husband? The reason is both the perceived shock value of the prostitution and maybe star power. The film touches on the topic of internet porn which would be more valid a topic in many ways. Binoche is damn good... maybe too good.
Christopher Scott Zeidel
8Dec12
Roger Ebert put it quite well; Elles is "disappointingly shallow." I'll add that I found ti cynical since there is no resolution and all the characters will continue living the sad lives they always have had. The good dramatic scenes of Juliet Binoche being inter-cut with graphic porno scenes as the young prostitutes service their clients is beyond awkward.
Dermo likes this
matteo
12Nov12
Viewer beware: cliche' ridden. Almost unbearable. The only highlight is the dancing scene - The Kinife's Heartbeats is always a good soundtrack. Weak anthropological visual essay about the ennui of the French upper class. Ah, fatigue... Fatigue universelle. Try Sexual Chronicles of a French Family (2012) instead. Equelly vacuous, but at least features strong, sexually empowered women rather than victims.
cathika
5Oct12
A metaphore on growing old... on old flesh and loss of love. A world where sex is sold or watched; a narrative where "the elements of crime" are given out but never true; an almost-porn in which one feels betrayed as Juliette Binoche is, or simply lost. All sequences seem open-ended until the very end. I personally left the theater with pieces into my hands and nothing left from it.
PolarisDiB
15Jul12
You won't get more out of this than is previously available in such films as Belle du Jour and Maitresse, but there are two scenes where characters sing along to music that stand out and almost feel like parts of other, more interesting movies. --PolarisDiB
pivic
30Apr12
Elegantly and intelligently edited, directed and acted film where Binoche plays a grown-up woman with intense personal problems who interviews young women who prostitute themselves, all for a magazine article. Some of the classical music was very in-your-face but the scene where The Knife's "Pass It On" was played, I liked. All in all it paints a portrait on some complexities of life that I haven't seen before.
La Schiff and violentcraving like this
Pawelito
22Apr12
Surprisingly entertaining despite the heavy subject matter. Although, seemingly, yet another vehicle for Juliette Binoche this film has much more to offer than the trailer would give away. Szumowska brings out something universal through the cross-examination of woman's choices and how these are related to or dependent on man's world. Also, an interesting study of an unhealthy fixation on other people's erotic lives.
La Schiff and chiarastami like this
Annie Gentil
21Apr12
Juliette Binoche is a well off journalist researching the prostitution of students. She interviews two prostitute girls but slowly gets moved and haunted by their stories. Men in this film are not depicted in a very good light, either weak, violent or with strange fantasies... Some scenes are overtly explicit and depict the kind of services and treatments the girls receive... An epic dinner scene towards the end...
La Schiff likes this