Isabelle Huppert in Special Treatment.
A high class prostitute (Isabelle Huppert) and an eminent psychoanalyst discover that they share many things in common. They are both unhappy with their professions, seeking a way out that involves unique contact with each other’s worlds.
Any film with the great Isabelle Huppert has got to be worth checking out. She is simply one of the greatest French film actresses of modern times and there is nothing that she does that isn’t in some way intelligent and honest. She must have liked this script or the role but, frankly, it is hard to see why.
She certainly commits to her role and she is in every scene. It is just that, under director Jeanne Labrune’s guidance, she seems shut off or even bored. Her character Alice Bergerac is a specialist escort/sex worker who sees only a few select clients; fat, sad, middle aged men for the most part.
Alice will don the occasional ‘special’ outfit – as per the film’s poster, even as a school girl – but most of the time her mouth is turned down and she just puts up with the old bores or gives them a bit of chat. No one seems to get much out of these decidedly unsexy encounters. At other times we see her indulging her passion for browsing antique shops (yes, sex workers have ‘normal’ lives and they like shopping. Not what one normally thinks of, but not a great revelation either).
Later she meets a shrink called Xavier Demestre (Belgian actor / director Bouli Lanners) and they strike up an uneasy relationship. Alice is looking for a change of direction and she asks Xavier for a recommendation for a friendly shrink so she can get her head sorted. In the end, nothing much seems resolved.
The film looks good, with beautiful French interiors, and the score is pleasing, but there is something missing from the experience as a whole. The parallels between sex work and psychiatry are not new or particularly interestingly explored. It is hard to believe that the clients would pay for what they get but maybe that is the point; prostitution like therapy has to be disappointing as it is based on a false premise (that paid-for intimacy can never feel as good as the real thing).
Labrune’s artistic choice not to show any nudity and to strip the encounters of any residual titillation may be intellectually astute but it also hollows out some of the content of the film. Huppert is never less than highly watchable but, if you pardon the pun, she missed a trick here.
Starring: Isabelle Huppert, Bouli Lanners, Sabila Moussadek, Richard Debuisne, Valérie Dréville
Directed by: Jeanne Labrune
Screenplay by: Richard Debuisne, Jeanne Labrune
Release Date: August 26th, 2011
MPAA Rating: None.
Studio: First Run Features
