Taglines: When neurotic becomes erotic…
A high class prostitute (Isabelle Huppert) and an eminent psychoanalyst discover that they share many things in common. They are both unhappy with their professions, seeking a way out that involves unique contact with each other’s worlds.
Drawing some intriguing parallels between the work of the prostitute and that of the psychiatrist-both have clients, both charge for sessions, both take on roles that serve the needs, psychological or otherwise, of those they serve, Jeanne Labrune’s drama stars Isabelle Huppert and Bouli Lanners as, respectively, Alice, a disaffected call girl and Xavier, a shrink with a crumbling domestic situation. With sex more talked about than shown, the film is filled with pointed dialogue and double entendres.
Review for Special Treatment
Isabelle Huppert is at it again. In “Special Treatment,” this mesmerizing French star with a history of playing sexually transgressive women (a sadomasochistic musician in “The Piano Teacher,” an incestuous mother in “Ma Mère”) portrays Alice Bergerac, a haughty prostitute whose clients engage her in elaborate role-playing fantasies. For a pedophiliac john, Alice dresses up as a little girl, clutches a teddy bear and sucks on a lollipop. For another client, who is not shown, she dons a blindfold and crams a ball gag into her mouth while awaiting his arrival.
For all of Alice’s deference to her clients, her contempt for them leaks out like a bad smell. She refers to one as “chandelier,” because the money she makes from him will cover the cost of a glittering ceiling ornament she has recently purchased. As in her other essays in kinkiness, Ms. Huppert conveys an iciness verging on cruelty. When she matter-of-factly regales one potential customer with a list of her fees and services — 400 euros (about $575) for 30 minutes, with a minimum of 10 sessions — you wonder why any man would sign up for fun and games with someone so forbiddingly chilly.
And to put it plainly, Ms. Huppert, now 58, is too old for the part. The spectacle of Ms. Huppert, the epitome of adult self-possession, impersonating a schoolgirl is grotesquely amusing.
“Special Treatment,” directed by Jeanne Labrune, who wrote the screenplay with Richard Debuisne, is really two stories running on parallel tracks to make a cynical and highly debatable point: that prostitution and psychoanalysis are really variations of the same hustle. Whether the practitioner is selling sex or omniscient empathy, it suggests, the goal is to make as much money as possible. The pompous psychoanalysts who inhabit the film attend auctions where they purchase high-priced antiques. An object that passes from one character to another is an 18th-century wooden angel whose symbolic meaning is indecipherable.
Alice’s head-shrinking counterpart, Xavier Demestre (Bouli Lanners), is as cold and impenetrable in his way as she is in hers. His most ludicrous patient is a portly, flirtatious cross-dresser (Frédéric Longbois) who tra-la-las in a serviceable contralto and to whom Xavier displays a stony indifference.
Alice and Xavier, who is separating from his wife, Hélène (Valérie Dréville), also a psychoanalyst, have reached the point of no return in their respective professions. Bored with their work and contemptuous of their clients, they would like to quit. But to do what? The immediate catalyst for Alice’s disgust is a sadist she chases out of her hotel room with a knife when he becomes too aggressive while administering corporal punishment.
Special Treatment
Directed by: Jeanne Labrune
Starring: Isabelle Huppert, Bouli Lanners, Sabila Moussadek, Valérie Dréville, Jean-François Wolff, Mathieu Carrière
Screenplay by: Richard Debuisne, Jeanne Labrune
Cinematography by: Virginie Saint-Martin
Film Editing by: Anja Lüdcke
Set Decoration by: Regine Constant
MPAA Rating: None.
Studio: First Run Features
Release Date:
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