House of Pleasures

The film takes place inside a Paris brothel in 1900 and almost never goes outside. The women live there, fall into debt, fall ill and grow old. The century turns and nothing indoors changes, except that the house is closing because the rent is going up. Bertrand Bonello scatters the narrative on purpose: no single protagonist, days blurring together, the same scene repeated from different angles, split screen. The most discussed choice is the music. Instead of period pieces, twentieth century rock and soul come in, and the anachronism lifts the film out of costume drama. Hafsia Herzi, Céline Sallette, Adèle Haenel, Jasmine Trinca and Noémie Lvovsky are among the cast. It screened in competition at Cannes in 2011. The difficulty is that violence and illness are shown directly, the pace is very slow, and the tension between the film's beauty and the exploitation it depicts is genuinely uncomfortable. Who it is for: viewers who like formally bold period films. Who it is not for: anyone who will find the subject and the scenes too heavy.