House of Tolerance

Saw House of Tolerance, a film set in a French brothel in the 1890s. It starts off with the women dressing and then marching down a flight of stairs to the sound of a snare drum, to meet the clients. The image struck me as soldiers going off to war, but it is clear in retrospect that the director wanted to evoke a more gallows feel. The film becomes sexy and sultry with little ominous flashes of creepiness such as the gallows-marching. There's an image of a man in a mask that strongly evokes the weirdness of the orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut. Disaster eventually strikes in the form of a knife-wielding client who scars a woman's face ala The Joker from Batman. Then a title-card falls and Act 2 is stagily announced.

The film then shifts into a sort of sad, tawdry feel. The sex and sexiness is still there, but the playful nature is gone, replaced by a listlessness. We get more and more shots of the girls vacantly smoking opium. The film is portraying these women as victims and though they are sexy, they are also deeply sad. The film is a bit arty and not very accessible. There's a scene near the end where they actually enact a dream that one of the women had described earlier. The non-linear shooting covers the same scenes over and over, from different angles and viewpoints. The highlight of the film, for me, and the moment when I felt closest to understanding what was going on was during a decadent showing of the woman's scars to a room full of dissipated old men and women. As they stroke her face, they kiss each other. The woman herself, painted up like a doll, rolls her head under their hands and gazes directly into the camera. Her gaze is challenging and defiant.

That scene is pretty awesome and the rest of the film, though slow and kind of glum, is also very sumptuous and intimate. We see all aspects of these women's lives, the highs and the lows. The film does feel a touch exploitative sometimes and I don't think it every really escapes that. The women are portrayed as victims but therefore also as objects to be exploited and fantasized about. It's not bad, it's just there. The film is moody and titillating (if you're into that kind of thing (which I am not)) I couldn't figure it out, so I can't speak much about its point (other than hand-wringing about exploitation.) An interesting film.