L’Apollonide: Souvenirs de la maison close
When one searches for “House of Tolerance”, you get to see girls in lush dresses and beautifully historical hairstyles. The trailer on MUBI captures this pretty well. In fact, the film is absolutely beautiful for the simple fact that its actresses are stunning and the costumes are splendid. I have admit that I have watched and finished the film purely because of its looks.
In terms of content, uh, it’s a worse “Utopia”. On the one hand, the film is marketed as “dazzling”, “erotic and “troublingly seductive”, on the other hand, it’s supposed to criticize how women are being treated badly. Come on, you can’t exploit feminine beauty and complain about said exploitation at the same time. This movie always shows sex as something kind of clean and disturbingly beautiful, yet at the same time there is a girl who catches syphilis and another one who tries to sticky champagne off her body. Sex in an actual brothel would never look as good as in this film, no matter how high class that brothel might be. In fact, why choose a high class brothel in the first place? Why showing the 1% lucky girls who ended up in a somewhat reputable establishment as opposed to showing the rest who are faring much worse? Yes of course it’s to please the audience with eyecandy. Sure, the film is eyecandy, but it also feels hypocritical to me. Needless to say that I also think the film is not, err, creepy enough? Just like “Sleeping Beauty”, the atrocities in the film are relatively tame (apart from the Joker face, which is pointed at way too much).
“Utopia” slips into none of these pitfalls. It doesn’t show sex a lot, and if it does, there is nothing erotic about it. The prostitutes don’t have feelings of love for their clients (I think those are just bullshit male fantasies), and they are not exceedingly beautiful. The film exploits the despair and perverse situation of the women much more deeply, not in this half-dreamy-half-cruel way. “Utopia” is much more real and honest about the job, and when comparing to “L’Apollonide”, I am amazed at the former’s accomplishments. Reviewers are raving about how beautiful the film is, and how it is stylish unlike most films about prostitutes. Just no. If you want style and beauty you can always make a movie out of “La Traviata”.
“L’Apollonide” was a feast for the eyes, but unnecessarily cruel and ultimately quite forgettable. It does make me realize that I like movies set in the fin de siècle. More please!