Elles -- Film Review
Elles
Directed
by Malgorzata Szumowska
This film is both good and ridiculous at the same time. Americans aren't going to like it, especially
women. We don't understand commercial
sex in this country, and furthermore, we're not even curious about it, even in
a prurient way. It's too repugnant to
even contemplate, let alone take seriously.
In the theater where I saw this film, there were maybe ten people. The film is in French with subtitles, and as
an American, I never forgot for a minute that I was not watching Americans. This
film wouldn't be made in America, by
Americans. It is too frank and candid
about sex, the sex is explicit, and the whores are sympathetic, likeable people. They're just wholesome, middle class girls
who are going to school and living at home, but they have a sideline that they
have to keep quiet about. (I don't like
the word 'prostitute.' It has too many
syllables, and it is at once euphemistic and disparaging. I prefer 'sex worker,' or 'whore.' 'Sex worker' is descriptive and
neutral. 'Whore' is plain, rough, and
earthy.) Anaïs
Demoustier, as Lola, is particularly captivating, because she is a young
looking girl with freckles and sweetness: not the stereotypic hard-edged American whore. The encounters between the girls and their
clients are warm and humane, and sometimes even passionate. They
seem to be enjoying themselves in their work and there is an atmosphere of good
feeling. The film enables one to see
that whores are not that different from any girl one might meet. Girls can have another side not readily
visible. Americans don't like to hear
this. We want a hard line between
"whores" and all other women, so that they can be despised without
mitigation. This film erases that line,
and thus it won't be popular in America because it challenges our simpleminded
stereotypes.
If you are not an American reading this, or you have not
spent considerable time in this country, then you cannot fathom the impact that
the last century of criminalization of commercial sex has had on relations
between men and women in this society.
Relations between men and women here are abysmal. Most people's sex lives are dull, unexciting,
troubled, or nonexistent, whether they are married or not. There are many exceptions, or course, but the
rule holds. No one comes to America for
sex tourism -- unless they are men looking for a gay scene. American
women are not known for being sexually forthcoming, and this tempers the
atmosphere of social life throughout society.
One thing commercial sex does, and it can be seen in this film, is that
it opens many avenues of communication between the sexes. Sex is fundamentally communication, and sex
facilitates communication on many levels between people beyond the satisfaction
of lust. Lola remarked that what
surprised her about her clients was not their sexual preferences, but how
freely they talked. She learned about
their jobs, their wives, their worries and fears, other interests they had, and
many small facts about them apart from sex that she never expected to learn. Sexually they are bored with their
wives. Their marriages are emotionally
dead, but the men are not, so they reach out to a young girl, even if they must
pay her. But it is mutually
advantageous. The young girl needs the
money and the independence it brings, and the older man needs the sex and the
companionship of a female. But paying
for sex makes it simple and easy; it limits the relationship between the
partners, and this is a great advantage if you happen to be married. This is the positive side of commercial
sex. It provides some relief and
diversion from the grim reality of most marriages, and it gives young girls a
chance to become economically empowered and independent from their families.
There is a lot of food preparation and eating in this
film. I wish there had been more sex and
less eating. The film is too long and
slow moving, but little by little, it does make its case. The moral of the story seems to be that
marriage is sexually dull, and if you want to want to have a good sex life, you
need to go to a whore or be a whore.
That's the ridiculous part of the film. The film presents a bleak picture of marriage,
which may indeed be representative, but is not necessary or inevitable. I don't know what the facts on the ground are
in France regarding marriage. In the
United States marriage is in decline. (If
you happen to be in a good one, you don't know that.) The divorce rate is around fifty percent.1,
2 In fact for the first time in
history we have more single people in the United States than married.3, 4
About a quarter of the U.S. population
lives alone.3 The reasons for
this are not only economic. There is
warfare between the sexes in the United States.
Government policies suppress sexual desire toward women and young girls,
and the disenfranchisement and criminalization of commercial sex is its most
visible cultural manifestation. Marriage
between one man and one woman is the only socially legitimate venue for sexual
expression, and that must be kept strictly private. Gay people are currently challenging this
against great resistance. But rolling
back the ban on commercial sex does not even occur to most Americans, and it is
an extraordinary omission in a country that commercializes everything in sight and
measures the value of any activity by the revenue it can generate. Legitimizing commercial sex would make sexual
activity an acceptable form of conduct and an acceptable way to relate to other
people in a broad range of situations.
Legal commercial sex would make sex a much more visible part of daily
life and a much more accessible part of daily life for most people. This would facilitate communication between
the sexes -- not necessarily understanding,
but communication. Currently
communication between the sexes in the United States is distorted and
confused. Men and women are
misunderstanding each other in so many ways, and it is rooted in the animosity
toward male desire that has been institutionalized in our legal system for
about a century now. Ending the hegemony
of asceticism over American social life would begin to break down the walls of
paranoia and estrangement that are so pervasive in this society. It is the most obvious and straightforward
way to improve relations between the sexes in this country and the quality of
our social life generally.
Let me elaborate on this with an example. One time I went out with a woman from
Argentina. She had not been in the
United States long, perhaps a couple of weeks.
Somewhere during the course of the afternoon she abruptly said,
"Can I ask you something?" "Sure." "Why is it that
when I walk down the street here, no one speaks to me?" "What?" "Yesterday I went to the De Young
Museum. I was there for three hours and
not one person spoke to me. Why is
that?" I didn't know what to
say. The question completely stymied
me. Americans who live in cities do not
expect strangers to speak to them in public places. If they do, we immediately become suspicious
and defensive. That's perfectly
normal. A woman who expects and welcomes
banter from strangers in public places is definitely not an American. It illustrates the extent to which paranoia
(and its constant companion, asceticism) dominate American social interactions
to the extent that we don't even notice how strange it is. American women are naturally skittish and
reserved in the presence of men. They
instinctively realize that sexual desire and animosity are lurking just below
the surface of any slight interaction. Keeping
the lid on that simmering volcano requires considerable avoidance and heavy
handed social pressure. It has taken us
a long time to establish those barriers to the point where they seem normal and
civilized. Legitimizing commercial sex
would radically alter that low temperature social culture that prevails in the
United States. This film, although in
French, contributes toward this in a modest way by removing some of the myths
and nonsense Americans have in their heads about commercial sex. But few American are going to watch this
film. It's too good for us.
The film did not emphasize the vulnerability of the girls
and the hazards they face as sex workers.
It touched on it a little bit, but the girls did not display a sense of
imposing vulnerability. In America women
who try to engage in sex as an entrepreneurial venture are extremely vulnerable
to (male) criminal organizations. This
is because it is illegal and not protected by the police and the judicial
institutions of society. In America, if
you engage in commercial sex and you have a problem, you're on your own. Thus the need for pimps and organized crime,
and the result is that commercial sex is forced to the darker margins of
society and remains ever stigmatized. In
France, commercial sex is legal, but there are numerous restrictions, and in
recent years government policies are becoming more repressive and the influence
of organized crime over the trade is consequently becoming greater.5
The married older journalist (Juliette Binoche) who is interviewing
the girls for an article in the film slowly evolves into a whore herself. This is another ridiculous aspect of the
film. The implied merging of wife and
whore is a popular myth among sex workers, but marriage and commercial sex are
very different kinds of relationships and very different social positions. The journalist's marriage is ruinous and she
seems to find respite in her association with the two whores with whom she
seems to become friends -- just as men in bad marriages find consolation with whores
also. She seems to envy them and moves
toward identifying with them as the film progresses. It tends to imply that the lives of sex
workers are better than the lives of married women. This is nonsense. Sex work is not better than marriage. Marriage is generally better, but sex work is
also valuable and a necessary adjunct to marriage. This is what French society seems to know, but
American society fails to recognize.
Men need both their wives and their whores. Both should be equally recognized, equally
legitimate, and equally protected by social institutions. We are unfortunately living in a time when
the values of asceticism dominate our law and our social life. But I have the sense that that long dreary era
is ending, and this film, although flawed, does help to dispel some of the
myths and popular nonsense about commercial sex.
1. Kreider, Rose M. and Jason M.Fields, 2001. Number, Timing, and Duration of
Marriages and Divorces: Fall 1996.
Current Population Reports, P70-80. U.S.
Census Bureau, Washington, DC.
"In summary, the general marital pattern for the last
half of the twentieth century can be described by both delays in marriage and a
period of a rapid increase in the likelihood of divorce." (p. 3)
2. National
Vital Statistics Reports, Volume 58, No. 25. August
27, 2010. U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for
Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics System.
3. Hobbs, Frank. Examining
American Household Composition: 1990 and 2000. U.S. Census Bureau. Washington,
DC. August, 2005. "Householders
living alone had become the most common specific household structure in 2000."
(p. 1) More than a quarter of the U.S.
population lives alone (p. 6)
4. Daphne Lofquist,
Terry Lugaila, Martin O’Connell, and Sarah Feliz. Households
and Families 2010. U.S.Census Bureau, Washington, DC. April, 2012.
"In 2010 less than half of all
households (48 percent) were husband-wife households, down from 52 percent in
2000 and 55 percent in 1990. This is the first time that husband-wife families
fell below 50 percent of all households in the United States since data on
families were first tabulated in 1940." (p. 5)
5. John Lichfield, The Independent. March 21, 2005