From Polish director Malgorzata Szumowska, Elles (2011) stars the self-challenging and emblematic French actress Juliette Binoche as Anne, a bourgeoisie-smothered feminist who works as a journalist for a women’s magazine. Unfortunately, this publication is the type that subconsciously vilifies and objectifies females, informing them that both material and financial gain is key to achieving success and acceptance.
In tow are her work-absorbed husband and two detached and antisocial sons. Their achingly routine life is everything Anne seeks to escape, ergo her head-first dive into research for her latest commission – an article on young student prostitution in Paris. Suddenly, Anne’s life becomes less clinical, and the sordid desires she had been suppressing for so long finally come to surface. The stories of both young call girls she meets (Anaïs Demoustier’s Charlotte and Joanna Kulig’s Alicja) becomes secondary next to our heroine’s plight – and yet the on-screen sex with various clients is gratuitous and constant.
Elles seeks to highlight the strength of morality and female control that takes place in prostitution – that a woman knows the uses of her body and can utilise them to manipulate the opposite sex in order to gain both power and finances. Yet the women here are only governed and upset by their actions – hardly empowering in the slightest. Interesting, however, is the seduction Anne herself succumbs to, surprising with sporadic bodily urges of an unusual (and non-heterosexual) nature.
Elles may well leave you feeling contemplative and lost in thought – though it’s hard to determine quite why that’s the case. Binoche’s Anne ultimately suffers a devastating rejection from her husband and her journey, carefully executed and inspiring up until this point, comes to a sudden end, showing the family together eating breakfast in a depressing tableau depicting a return to her apparently stagnant life – and the film’s initial equilibrium.