Lustful liaisons with Juliette Binoche

Elles, starring Juliette Binoche as a sexually frustrated journalist, portrays student prostitution in a controversial new light. ‘I don’t want to patronise the girls,’ says director Malgoska Szumowska
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3 April 2012

In Juliette Binoche’s new film, Elles, a beautiful young student has sex with a beautiful young man. After which, he puts a pile of cash on the bed.

“We call this sponsoring in Poland,” says 39-year-old director Malgoska Szumowska. “I don’t see this girl as a prostitute. The kind of girls she is based on don’t see themselves as prostitutes. They treat it more like they are dating. Dating nice guys.”

Elles, a French language film, is inspired by a real-life social trend. But before you fire off a letter of complaint that the Evening Standard is celebrating the exploitation of young women, let me say that while Szumowska’s film heads off in an extremely dodgy direction, it arrives somewhere unexpected. Like Steve McQueen’s Shame, it is an arty yet accessible film that wants to look at lust in a new way. And, for the most part, it succeeds beautifully.

The central character is a liberal, middle-class, sexually frustrated journalist called Anne (Juliette Binoche) who is writing a piece all about student prostitution.

She meets with two girls, Lola and Alicja, who insist that they are very happy with their part-time careers. Anne tries to make sense of their position, disturbed to find herself attracted by the girls’ youth and beauty. In the most erotic sequence, she enjoys a drunken night with the vital, slightly unhinged Alicja (brilliantly played by gorgeous Polish newcomer, Joanna Kulig).

Just as importantly, Anne (and the audience) begin to see the men in her life differently. Her urbane, intellectual male friends, it transpires, are not averse to taking advantage of financial desperation. One is the kind of landlord who — midway through haggling over the cost of the room — asks to see his would-be tenant’s breasts. A dinner party at the end of the film turns horribly, comically surreal as Anne realises the extent to which her own world touches that of Lola (played by Anaïs Demoustier) and Alicja.

The UK release of Elles this month is bound to reignite the controversy already stirred at its festival screenings. Critics at Toronto last September and Berlin in February accused it, among other things, of being a “soft-core fantasy”, suggesting that the film-maker knew very little about prostitution.

Szumowska has her defence ready. She arches an elegant eyebrow (this is a very elegant and attractive woman). “I’m talking about a corrupt system. A system that makes victims of us all. If women are valued primarily for their youth and beauty, it affects everyone: men, women, old and young, rich and poor. We are all in trouble! But some people prefer to say just the young girls are victims. That they need to be saved. Anyway, who in the media knows about prostitution?” she demands.

“You have to do research. I talked to so many girls — girls from the provinces but also girls from Krakow and Warsaw who want to move abroad, to have a good position in society. It is different from ordinary prostitution — they’re not starving, they don’t have pimps, they are not drug addicts. If they work in restaurants or do babysitting they don’t get so much money and they have less time to study. They are very confident about what they do. Yes, I think there is a certain amount of delusion. My way — I go to university for two years, talk only of metaphysics — of course, I think that is better! I’m lucky. But I don’t want to patronise the girls. I am curious about their point of view and I want to explore it.”

Without exception, all the reviewers agree that Binoche gives a superb performance. Most seem equally convinced that she was unwise to become involved with the project. Variety, for example, argues that “Elles challenges the actor’s integrity ... to an unprecedented degree”.

Szumowska chortles. “Juliette loved making this film with me. We had such a good time. I remember this scene where her character is masturbating. I’d got Juliette to watch this website, which shows people having orgasms. But still, she was finding it hard. So at one point she said, ‘ Oh, Malgoska, now you have to tell me a lot of vulgar things.’ I said, ‘In English?’ She said, ‘Of course, in English.’ So I start to talk to her as a man. Like, ‘I want to f*** you. Bitch!’ And then my cinematographer, he couldn’t stop laughing. We were all laughing. So then Juliette says, ‘Okay. Maybe you can count from 1 to 100 and each 20 ... [Szumowska mimes an orgasmic spasm].’ And Juliette is very happy. She says ‘Yes! Now I know where I am!’”

Things were slightly more complicated with Anaïs Demoustier, the 23-year-old actress who plays Lola. “I said at the beginning that if she is playing in a film with that kind of subject she has to play naked and do everything I ask her. Because otherwise it’s not going to be believable. And she said yes. But then, suddenly, she got nervous. We have quarrels. She felt ... not safe. But it was a safe situation. Everything is fine now. We text each other all the time. She’s proud of the film but,” Szumowska sighs, “also ashamed. Probably it was not the same for her as for the rest of us.”

Another charge made of Elles is that it is anti-male. Not true, says Szumowska. “Only the hetero, very macho men won’t like it. All my gay friends love it. My husband loves it, too.”

Ah, yes, her husband. As distinct from her cinematographer, who is her ex-husband (“It helps to have slept with the people you’re working with”). She goes on to reveal a further twist in her personal life. “I was in a relationship with my boyfriend, who edited this film, and will edit the next one, he is still my friend and he is the father of my son. But after six years ... the sexual aspect, the man/woman aspect, had disappeared. Anne being sexually frustrated — feeling so stuck — that was something I could relate to. I shared my feelings with Binoche. A lot of private things were explored. And then, after the film, I changed my life completely ...”

Szumowska (who fiddles with her hair a lot) carefully re-arranges her fringe. “I can say this, because we are in England. In Poland, it’s more complicated.”

Things got complicated in Poland because, among other things, Szumowska’s new husband (an actor who has a tiny role in Elles) is very young. He is 25.

“This film changed my life,” she says, “but not just me: five members of the crew also got divorced. We have to try to change things. Some people feel empty and lonely; some people have money. They want to feel things through sexuality. But you can have lots of sex and still be frustrated. So it’s not about that. It’s about not letting a wall come down between you and other people. Men and women have to try to keep the relationships in their life from being mechanical.”

She ends the interview with a big smile. “You know, the film is doing so well in Poland. And in France. It’s been sold to 33 countries. Audiences are responding to what I’m trying to say. So what if some critics don’t like the film? I didn’t make it for them.”

Elles is released on April 20.

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