A journalist does under cover work

 

Juliette Binoche plays a journalist who goes undercover to expose the exploitation of the women who clean ferries that traverse the English Channel. The work is brutally difficult, and the women who do it struggle to keep their heads above water. Based on a book by real-life reporter Florence Aubenas, Between Two Worlds finds Binoche posing as Marianne Winkler, a divorcee whose well-heeled husband left her without resources. Desperate, Marianne turns to gig work. As the story develops, Marianne befriends Chrystele (Helene Lambert), a single mother straining to keep her three-kid household afloat. The cleaning work is far from glamorous, and director Emmanuel Carrera, working from a screenplay he wrote with Hélène Devynck, depicts the drudgery the women experience as they hurry to make beds and clean bathrooms during the short period between ferry trips. The screenplay also attempts to deal with the ethical issues involving reporters and their sources, particularly when the journalist doesn't identify as a reporter.  It's an interesting enough issue but the movie's commitment to portraying the dogged realism of gig labor turns ethical concerns into a bit of an afterthought. The byplay among the women reflects appealing authenticity; it made me wonder whenever Between Two Worlds wouldn't have been more effective had it told Chrystele's story and left journalism at the shore.

‘Paradise Highway’ wastes two great actors

A movie that features Juliette Binoche and Morgan Freeman in prominent roles is bound to tempt viewers who otherwise might not care about a pulpy story in which a long-distance truck driver (Binoche) tries to rescue a girl (Hala Finley) from a ring of sex-traffickers. Freeman plays a former lawman who steps out of retirement to aid in the search for Binoche's Sally and the girl, who take to the road in Sally’s semi. The cast also includes Frank Grillo as Sally's imprisoned brother. On the eve of his release, he asks Sally to transport some illicit cargo so that he can square himself with a gang that's threatening his life. Shocked and unsettled, Sally learns that the cargo is a girl who’s bound for sex slavery. Reluctantly, Sally opts to save the girl. I'll say no more except to note that I found it painful to watch two terrific actors saddled with lame dialogue. Moreover, Binoche is miscast as a foul-mouthed, tough-minded long haul driver, a role deprives of her of the ambiguous allure that has drawn us closer in so many movies. Too often, Freeman is stuck bantering with his younger partner (Cameron Monaghan) as they try to save the girl. I think you can guess the girl’s fate but neither Binoche nor Freeman can save the movie.

Juliette Binoche in a love triangle

   We've seen films about love triangles before, but director Claire Denis's Both Sides of the Blade delves into the complications that arise when conflicted characters find themselves occupying the same constricted circle. 

  Juliette Binoche plays Sara, a radio talk show host who's been living with Jean (Vincent Lindon),  an ex-ruby player who spent time in prison for a crime that the screenplay never specifies. 

  Judging by the film's romantic opening -- the couple on a beach vacation -- Sara and John are happy. When a film begins with such relaxed, sensuous ease, we can be sure that a wave is about to crash.

  It does, but slowly, which means that Denis reveals more and more about her characters as the film progresses.

  On her way to work one day, Sara sees Francois (Gregoire Colin), the former lover with whom she was living when she met Jean. Old feelings rekindle.

  The characters are mired in complicated situations. Jean travels to a nearby town to visit his mother (Bulle Ogier). She's taking care of Jean's mixed-race son (Issa Perica) who has been getting in trouble in school. Jean's ex-wife has left the country. 

  For his part, Francois decides to start a sports agency. He hires Jean, who has an eye for on-the-field talent and we get the feeling that Francois and Jean might have more history than their connections to Sara.

  Binoche gives another exceptional performance as a woman who lies to Jean about the affair she's having with Francois. Sara seems to want both the excitement of spontaneous passion and the stable predictability of her relationship with Jean.

  The character of Francois isn't as well-developed as either Jean or Sara, but Colin and Binoche create the kind of sparks that make it clear that the fire between them hasn't gone out. 

   Few actresses convey ambiguity as well as Binoche, who always seems a step or two beyond the confinement of any single definition. You'll either find this puzzling or intriguing. I'd opt for the latter or maybe a bit of both.

   Two Side of the Blade involves two memorable characters who find themselves in a relationship in which they're trying to deny the power of personal history.

  The film's English title, by the way. comes from a song by the English band Tindersticks. Binoche’s portrayal of Sara’s attempt to negotiate two sides of the same coin (or blade, if you prefer) captivates, maddens, and -- in the end -- makes Denis's film linger in the mind.

Juliette Binoche as a youth-obsessed woman

The French movie, Who You Think I Am, conflates a variety of issues, principal among them perilous games that can be played on social media and the way time impacts women who long for the days when they still could turn heads. It should come as no surprise that Juliette Binoche plays Claire Millaud,  a professor of literature who tries to determine why a younger lover abandoned her. In the process, Claire uses social media to create a fictional avatar, a sexy 24-year-old woman who captivates her former lover’s roommate (Francois Civil).  As the game — if that’s what it is — progresses, Binoche’s character and her new young admirer form a virtual bond that both begin to take seriously. For Claire, the ruse provides a way of recapturing the feelings of her youth, how she felt about herself before her husband left her for a younger woman. Claire, who tells her story to a psychiatrist (Nicole Garcia), has two sons but her obsession with turning back the clock takes precedence over everything else. Of course, reality and fiction eventually must collide and director Safy Nebbou finds ways to make the collision interesting. Who You Think I Am can be a little too self-consciously tricky, but the movie stands as an intriguing and disturbing character study. Binoche makes Claire real and never less than intriguing as a woman who might be delusional, devious, bitter, or sensual -- perhaps all of the above.

Deneuve goes full diva in 'The Truth'

Director Hirokazu Koreeda leaves Japan to direct The Truth, a movie about the relationship between an aging actress (Catherine Deneuve) and her grown daughter (Juliette Binoche).  Setting his story in Paris, Koreeda focuses on characters struggling to live with years of lies and resentments — all while simply trying to survive a family visit.

The story centers on Deneuve’s Fabienne Dangeville, a celebrated French actress who’s no longer landing the great roles. It seems as if Fabienne was written for Deneuve who takes over the part with easy command and flashes of callous wit. Accustomed to getting her way, Fabienne refuses to be anything less than the center of attention, even when she’s playing a supporting role in a movie featuring an up-and-coming new actress (Manon Clavel).

Koreeda embeds the story's familial tensions in a typical scenario. Binoche’s Lumir, her American husband Hank (Ethan Hawke), and their young daughter (Clementine Grenier) arrive from the US to help celebrate the publication of Fabienne’s memoir. 

By trade, daughter and son-in-law instantly find themselves in competition with Fabienne. Lumir writes screenplays: Hank acts — although his career seems to be going nowhere and his battles with the bottle have made trips to rehab a regular feature on his calendar.

Lumir regards her mother’s autobiography as a self-aggrandizing work of fiction. Lumir finds Fabienne's attempts to portray herself as a devoted mother laughable. Fabienne never cared as much about her daughter as she did about her career.

Fabienne clearly expresses the priorities that govern her life; i.e., the truths that never made it into her book, which ironically she has entitled The Truth. Fabienne would rather be regarded as a good actress than a good mother, for example. She doesn’t allow for the possibility that one might be both.

The atmosphere isn't venomous, but no one escapes Fabienne's tendency to regard others as instruments of her will. Fabienne's long-time agent and adviser (Alain Libolt) must suffer the shame of never being mentioned in his client's book, for example.

To add a mirror-like twist, Koreeda takes us to the set of the new sci-fi movie on which Fabienne has begun work. She's playing the daughter of a mother who travels into space to avoid dying from a terminal disease. Fabienne portrays the daughter when she’s old, near death, and still dealing with a youthful mother who’s only able to visit Earth periodically. The neglectful mother is playing the neglected daughter.

A running theme of accusation also emerges. Fabienne once out-maneuvered a close friend — now deceased — out of a part that brought Fabienne a coveted Cesar Award. Lumir presses her mother to feel something akin to guilt. Fabienne will have none of it. For her, the world and its occupants exist primarily as source material for her work.

Those familiar with Koreeda’s movies (Shoplifters, After Life) know that he favors an unhurried style that allows an audience to get to know his characters. I wouldn’t say that The Truth represents Koreeda’s best work, but Koreeda knows how to put teeth into a drama that seldom erupts, bleeds, or screams. He may not go for the kill, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know where the wounds are.

Floating toward the void in a spaceship

Director Claire Denis suggests more than she may be saying in High Life.

A group of convicts floats through space in a vessel that looks more like a barge than something designed by anyone who'd ever seen a spaceship or a movie about one. These unfortunate souls evidently thought that traveling through the darkened void en route to a black hole would be better than submitting to the death penalty on Earth.

Earth, by the way, has become so distant for them that there's barely enough memory of it left to fuel a decent flashback. Later, we'll learn that the Earth is pretty much doomed and that these voyagers might be what's left of humanity. In the movies, humanity never has difficulty finding its way toward extinction. All connections to reality, we presume, are purely intentional.

French director Claire Denis begins her movie by showing us an onboard garden where vegetables are cultivated. A shoe, apparently detached from its owner, peeks out from beneath the soil. We'll also see a man in a space suit (Robert Pattinson) tightening bolts outside the craft. Inside, an infant girl happily makes infant-girl noises. We presume the man in the space suit is the girl's father.

Gradually, Denis -- working in English for the first time -- reveals her approach, which has less to do with sci-fi than with quietly subjecting her characters to the kinds of cruelty desperate people are prone to inflict on one another. She's also studying sexual gratification, which takes place on the ship in a device called "The Box."

In conjunction with the movie's approach to sex, we meet a crazed scientist (Juliette Binoche) who's obsessed with reproducing life in deep space. Many bodily fluids flow as Dibs, who seems to be in charge of the others, collects sperm samples from the men as part of her experiments.

The scene in which Binoche's character enters "The Box" for sexual stimulation requires the actress to abandon all inhibition. At the same time, it can feel more squirm-inducing than erotic. Dibs, after all, is getting it on with a machine, perhaps the most elaborate sex toy ever to spring from someone's imagination.

No, I haven't forgotten the infant, who showed up early in the movie but who represents a later development in the story's shuffled chronology. Baby Willow (Scarlett Lindsey) receives tender treatment from Pattinson's Monte. She also drives him crazy with her crying.

Denis gradually reveals what happens to the rest of the crew, pacing her movie so slowly you might wonder whether she regards anything resembling narrative drive as a cardinal sin.

Other passengers on this voyage include a black man (Andre Benjamin) who says he volunteered to bring glory to his family and a variety of women (Mia Goth, Agata Buzek, Claire Tran, and Gloria Obianyo).

After the passage of time, Jessie Ross portrays the teenage Willow. Ewan Mitchell appears as one of the more violent passengers on this trip toward the void.

Pattinson, who often whispers his character's thoughts, continues to be one of today's most adventurous actors. Same goes for Binoche. I didn't always know what Denis' purposes were, but these two actors seem to suit them perfectly.

Credit Denis with creating a pervasive sense of weirdness that gets under the skin, insinuating itself into consciousness, somewhat in the way that the steady flow of an IV drip invades the veins. You may leave the movie in a kind of art-induced daze.

But what does it all mean? Too much? Too little?

Denis operates light years away from thrill-a-minute Hollywood cinema; her style requires patience and perhaps a little caffeine. I wish I could say, High Life produced a more discernible reward. I'm not sure that the movie's images lend themselves to any resounding thematic statement. High Life just might be a movie that wants to say something profound but leaves us wondering exactly what that might be.

A showcase for actress Juliette Binoche

If director Claire Denis’s Let the Sunshine In were nothing more than a tribute to the allure and complexity of actress Juliette Binoche, it would be well worth seeing. The movie, however, offers more than a showcase for Binoche, putting her at the center of a story about a woman struggling to come to grips with the relationships in her life. In Let the Sunshine In, Binoche plays Isabelle, an artist of some repute. Yet, the film is not really about Isabelle’s art or about her creative aspirations. And it's not really about her role as a mother, either. Throughout the course of this 96-minute movie, we see Isabelle's daughter for only a few seconds. Like Isabelle, the movie fixates on relationships, most of which are, in one way or another, unsatisfying. Denis doesn’t shortchange Isabelle’s sexual life; it opens with her in bed with one of her lovers (Xavier Beauvois), a banker who we quickly learn is a certified jerk. Later, she becomes involved with an actor (Nicolas Duvauchelle) who’s married. She’s almost, but not entirely, done with her ex-husband (Laurent Grevill) and she meets a guy in a club (Paul Blain) with whom she seems to make a powerful connection. Isabelle’s conversations take her on a stutter-step journey in pursuit of lasting commitment. Isabelle’s art life nips at the movie’s fringes but her conversations become a series of false starts and perhaps even avoidance of what's going on with the men in her life. The men in the movie aren't much better at establishing real connections. In the movie’s final going, Gerard Depardieu somewhat inexplicably shows up as a psychic who has a long reassuring talk with Isabelle as the final credits roll. Are we to believe him when he says she’ll ultimately find the longed-for love? Is he fueling her delusions, renewing her hopes in a life that isn't really going to change? I’m not sure, but I found this novel approach to the movie’s closing credits mesmerizing, as full of twists and blind alleys as the rest of a movie that only an actress as supple, furious and open to confusion as Binoche could have pulled off.

Dancing her way toward freedom

A classically trained Russian ballerina wonders how much self-expression she must sacrifice in preparing for her audition for the Bolshoi Ballet. Anastasia Shevtsova, a real dancer, portrays Polina, the movie's title character as a young woman. Based on a graphic novel by Bastien Vives and directed by Valarie Muller and choreographer Angelin Preljocaj , Polina follows Polina from childhood into her 20something years. Initially, Polina studies with Bojinski (Aleksey Guskov), no-nonsense teacher who doles out compliments parsimoniously. When Polina travels to Moscow to try out for the Bolshoi, she falls for a French dancer (Niels Schneider) and decides to return to France with him, much to the dismay of her father. Miglen Mirtchev plays Polina's Dad, a man who has fallen into difficulties with the Russian mob but who always wanted to see his daughter become a prima ballerina. In France, Polina joins a company run by Lira Elsaj (Juliette Binoche), a character whose style is freer and more modern than anything to which Polina has been exposed. Trouble looms: An ankle injury hampers Polina's career and her romance falls apart, leaving her to travel to Antwerp, where she works as a bar tender. There, she meets Karl (Jeremie Beligard); you won't be surprised to learn that Polina and Carl wind up dancing together. Hardly groundbreaking, Polina nonetheless features two fine performances from the actresses who play Polina (Veronica Zhovnytska as the young Polina and Shevitsova as the more mature dancer). Polina isn't the deepest drama but the dancing elevates a story that sometimes feels predictable. Credit Shevtsova with creating a character who's trying to use her training and develop her own style. Polina doesn't necessarily want to throw away the past; she hopes to carry it into a more liberated future.

Two strange families, one bizarre movie

French director Bruno Dumont tries his hand at comedy, but Slack Bay is no ordinary laugh machine.

It's not easy to write a capsule description for a movie that includes cannibalism, serial killing, gender confusion, slapstick, romance, incest and what may be one of the most unusual jobs ever depicted on screen, carrying people across the shallows of a marshy bay. I'm not talking about a boat trip, but about a father/son team that literally picks people up and carries them across the water in their arms.

Directed by Bruno Dumont, Slack Bay takes us to the craggy coastal area of northern France in 1910. There, we meet two very strange families, the Van Peteghems (clueless and well-to-do) and the Bruforts (poor and mean-spirited).

The Van Peteghems live in a strange, fortress of a house overlooking the bay. The Van Peteghems embody all the pretensions of the supercilious upper classes. They are summer residents of the area. The Bruforts reside year-round on the poor side of town, hauling mussels from the sea and occasionally murdering an unsuspecting tourist by using an oar as a club.

The Bruforts are a sullen lot, and they make full use of their victims, chopping their bodies into small parts and munching on what might be called human tartare. Anyone for a foot? Perhaps a big toe?

As people disappear, two detectives roam the beach trying to determine what happened to those who have vanished. One is a corpulent man (Didier Despres) who wears a bowler and makes squishing sounds when he moves. His frequent falls usually result in a roll down one of the sand dunes that dot the beach. An assistant (Cyril Rigaux) accompanies his parade-float of a boss everywhere.

One of the charms, if that's the right word, of Dumont's movie is that the characters never seem to mesh. They are, in their way, a collection of lunatics, particularly the wealthy family, which is lead by a hunchback (Fabrice Luchini) who seems to have no control over his arm movements and whose mouth seems to have settled into a permanent droop. Luchini's Andre moves with the jangled grace of a swan in the midst of a seizure.

He has arrived at the seaside with his wife (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi). Later, he's visited by his sister (Juliette Binoche). Binoche's character is less a human than a walking aria of self-dramatizing gestures.

The Van Peteghems live in a building they have named the Tymphonium, a structure modeled on their view of ancient Egyptian architecture.

At various times, the Van Peteghems are visited by the brother of Tedeschi's character. Christian (Jean-Luc Vincent) seems to be mentally challenged, but not enough to play the role of holy fool.

Meanwhile, the poor side of town is represented by a patriarch (Thierry Lavieville) who calls himself the Eternal and his oldest son, Ma Loute (Brandon Lavieville). Ma Loute has the defiant look of a confirmed outsider.

Add to this mix a girl who dresses like a boy but who may actually be a boy, played by an actor identified only as Raph. Raph's androgynous Billie immediately is attracted to Ma Loute. She/he is thunderstruck and so is Ma Loute.

Little in this oddball world jells, but Dumont's mixture proves funny, strange and confounding, and each of the movie's mood is enhanced by the beautiful, often painterly compositions of cinematographer Guillaume Deffontaines.

Dumont mostly has made serious films (Humanite and Twentnine Palms). Though dubbed a comedy, Slack Beach has a serious substrata. Issues about class rivalry and human folly underlie the movie's bizarre whimsy. Dumont has concocted a world that exists in its own bubble-like sphere, refusing to be grounded by the confines of known realities or by customary moral proprieties. His movie is all the better for it.

She navigates a new life as a cyborg

Scarlett Johansson stars in Ghost in the Shell, a visually stunning but flawed version of a much-admired Japanese anime series.

The makers of Ghost in the Shell, a live-action version of a story that stems from a revered 1995 anime offering by Mamoru Oshii, have spared no expense trying to move the awe needle by creating a visual environment that befits an amazingly conceived future world.

Led by director Rupert Sanders, the Shell team places their movie somewhere between reality and imagination. Those who feared that this version would somehow diminish their feeling about the achievements of the original will have their own take on the movie. I'm not a purist, so this edition didn't bother me. Besides, there' nothing to stop anyone from watching the original, which derived from a manga comic.

Now for the controversy: Some commentators have been upset by the selection of Scarlett Johansson for the role of Major Motoko Kusanagi, a cyborg who strives to bring evildoers to justice. An American star playing a Japanese character? Surely, this role should have gone to an Asian actress, certainly a powerful argument.

The counter argument revolves partly around commercial considerations. A big-ticket production needs a big-ticket star. Perhaps to appease critics, the character Johansson plays is referred to only as "Major." I've also read that the filmmakers explain the ethnic shift by telling us that the character who died and whose brain was transplanted into a cyborg was Japanese. Johansson's cyborg ... well ... it's a synthetic creation that has been designed to look ethnically neutral and, yes fanboys, sexy in a flesh-colored, body-clinging suit that makes Johansson appear to be naked.

But its background as much as sensuality that qualifies Johansson for the role. She played an alien in 2013's Under the Skin. She's handled action in 2014's Lucy. And she's been an entirely artificial character, as the off-screen voice of a computer operating system in Her (2014).

I don't know if it constitutes high praise, but Johansson makes a pretty good cyborg, a character who's haunted by slivers of memory from her former human life.

To the extent that the movie has intellectual concerns, they revolve around questions of what exactly makes a person human. The idea is that advanced cyborgs are inhabited by what the movie refers to as "ghosts;" i.e., the souls of humans who have been developed into entirely new creatures -- in this case under the supervision of Dr. Ouelet (French actress Juliette Binoche speaking with an American accent).

There were times when I wished that Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman) would wipe away a low-impact story and simply let us wander around the city he has created, an urbanscape where giant hologram advertisements are projected from buildings, where high-rise apartments reach for the sky and the streets feel alluring and alive.

Aside from Johansson, the rest of the cast is relegated to true supporting roles. Pilou Asbaek appears as Batou, Major's loyal and totally human partner. Takeshi Kitano plays Aramaki, a human who's not to be trifled with and who has an empathy for the cyborg plight. Michael Carmen Pitt portrays Kuze, a mysterious, hooded cyborg. Peter Ferdinando has been given stand-out moments as Cutter, a sinister character who runs a company that develops robots.

Some of the human characters have been "enhanced; i.e., they've chosen to develop certain parts of themselves with cybernetic infusions, something I thought about on the ride home from a preview screening as I debated about making yet another appointment with a chiropractor about recurrent back issues.

Fair to say, though, that Ghost's overwhelming visual achievements tend to dwarf any serious consideration of what it means to be human and an action-enhanced story tends to do what a surfeit of action sequences generally do -- numb our sensibilities, a liability that, for me, was abetted by Clint Mansell and Lorne Balfe's trance-inducing score.

So where do I come down on this mega-production that's probably going to cement Johansson into a long-running franchise? If you want to be overwhelmed by visuals, have at it. If you're looking for a high degree of involvement in a compelling story, be a little wary. And if you want to see a perfect fusion of story and visuals, you may want to be even warier.

Life is tough -- even for stars

Clouds of Sils Maria examines the woes of an aging actress.

There are two important characters in Clouds of Sils Maria -- and only one of them is human.

The latest collaboration between director Olivier Assayas and actress Juliette Binoche revolves around an aging actress who's being pushed from center stage. She's the obvious human in this drama.

Then there's the other character: time, a relentless accumulation of years that's pushing the actress out of the spotlight.

Binoche plays Maria, an accomplished middle-aged French actress who spends most of the movie in the company of her impressively efficient assistant (Kristen Stewart).

In addition to handling Maria's affairs -- everything from an impending divorce hearing to press requests -- Stewart's Valentine also interprets an increasingly youth-oriented culture for a skeptical Maria.

The movie opens on a train with Maria and Valentine headed for a tribute to the director who launched Maria's career. In the midst of the trip, they learn that the director has passed away, turning the pending tribute into a sad affair.

At what was to be a celebration, Maria meets an actor with whom she once had an affair, but on whom she has soured. The movie then slips away to Switzerland, where Maria and Valentine ensconce themselves in a mountain home owned by the late director's wife.

Clouds of Sils Maria has backstage allure. Assayas takes us into Maria's private world. She's capable of putting on good front, but her laugh reveals a bit of desperation, as well as the wear of too many cigarettes.

Despite various digressions, Clouds revolves around a single event. A hot-shot director (Lars Eidinger) offers Maria a part in a stage production of The Maloja Snake, the movie that established her career.

This time, though, Maria must play the older of two women engaged in a love relationship that falls apart as the younger woman becomes increasingly assertive.

The more incendiary role has gone to Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloe Grace Moritz), a youthful actress who can't seem to keep her face out of the tabloids. Jo-Ann, who has appeared in sci-fi blockbusters, is either a Hollywood A-lister or about to become one.

Stewart's character occupies a middle ground between Maria and her youthful challenger. She respects Maria, but appreciates Jo-Ann's gift, an admiration that's revealed when Maria and Valentine go to a theater to watch one of Jo-Ann's 3D, sci-fi extravaganzas.

When Maria and Valentine run lines from the upcoming play, it becomes clear that they're also acting out portions of their complex relationship, sometimes in ways that seem too on-the-nose.

It may help to know that the movie has an insider component: Binoche and Assayas worked together on Rendez-vous (1985), an Andre Techine-directed movie that Assayas co-wrote and which helped bring Binoche to prominence. They also teamed for 2008's Summer Hours.

After her fine work in the Alzheimer's drama Still Alice, Stewart continues to impress. She plays the least defined and, therefore, most interesting of the three women.

Assays is no speed demon when it comes to pacing, and he isn't exactly breaking new ground here. Clouds sometimes seems to be drifting, and the insular world of these performers can narrow to the point of off-putting self-absorption.

It's also not clear why Assayas made Binoche, who's 51, into a 40-year-old for his movie. Perhaps he wanted to emphasize that show business so values newness and youth that 40 is considered old for an actress.

As for Maria and Jo-Ann, they're jockeying for position -- not only with each other -- but, in Maria's case, with the inevitability of advancing time. Her tragedy, one supposes, is that she's smart enough to know that she's not going to beat the clock.

Prostitutes and other working women

How you react to Elles -- director Malgorsata Szumowska's lingering look at a Parisian journalist (Juliette Binoche) who's writing an article about prostitution -- depends on what you think of the ways in which Szumowska has portrayed the film's prostitutes. Elles focuses on two bright and breezy young women (Anaïs Demoustier and Joanna Kulig) who seem unusually confident about the way in which they earn their money.

Each of these women finds herself in at least one situation that's either physically damaging or emotionally abusive, but for the most part each seems to take her work in stride. Each chooses her own clients. Each feels a little sorry for the mostly older men who use her services. These attractive young characters can seem as if they were contrived solely to counter stereotypical images of prostitutes, but they're usually in good spirits when we see them.

That's more than can be said for Binoche's frazzled character. Binoche's Anne is raising two sons -- one who loses himself in video games and another who smokes too much pot. She's also dealing with a husband who expects her to prepare lavish dinners for his boss, and she's trying to write the magazine article about prostitution, a task that seems to be troubling her greatly.

The only time Binoche's Anne seems happy and relaxed is when she's in the company of one or the other of the prostitutes whom she's interviewing for her article. She's able to laugh with them in a way that she can't at home. She's even turned on by some of the stories her hooker subjects tell her.

Szumowska has said that the prostitutes in her movie are realistically depicted, that today's young women can become prostitutes without pimps. They can choose their clients. The Internet has replaced walking the streets.

Maybe so, but film begs us to ask a painfully obvious question: Which is worse, happy prostitution or a miserable, hypocritical bourgeouis existence? Szumowska, who includes lots of explicit scenes between prostitutes and their customers, doesn't gain enough by bringing Anne and these young prostitutes into the same movie. What seems daring on the surface turns into an act of thematic reduction rather than expansion. Throughout, I kept wondering what a director such as Catherine Breillat,* who also has explored sexuality and its attendant issues, might have done with similar material.

Some of Breillat's films: *36 Fillette (1988); Romance (1999); Parfait amour! (1996) and Brève traversée (2001).