Comments on: House of Pleasures (2011)

By: Kathleen Treubig

Kathleen Treubig — Sat, 03 May 2014 09:48:59 +0000

Such an articulate review 🙂

By: Caty Simon

Caty Simon — Thu, 01 May 2014 18:48:02 +0000

Yeah, well, one of the brothel workers does have a client pay off her debts and presumably becomes a kept woman as the brothel closes, but it’s just presented as a different sort of sex work. I’m not sure all women were miserable at the time–even in oppressive circumstances, many people find a way of thriving, and also I’m sure having other privilege helped for some—but I see your point.

By: John Punter

John Punter — Thu, 01 May 2014 03:50:00 +0000

One defense is that I suspect most women (maybe most people) at that time of history were either miserable, or in that numb state that many can retreat into as a way of avoiding blatant misery. As long as they didn’t do the “ray of hope as one fallen woman is saved by a kindly client” thing.

By: Caty Simon

Caty Simon — Thu, 01 May 2014 02:48:19 +0000

In reply to Sarah. Ha, yes, it was certainly a failure of this review to not mention that panther! And also, what they ultimately have the animal do...

By: Sarah

Sarah — Thu, 01 May 2014 02:00:49 +0000

In reply to Caty Simon. Hey, thanks for this review! I vividly remember how frustrated I was at that last scene with the street hooker; I'm glad to get the French contextualization. But. One of the best things about House of Pleasures: the black panther they keep in the brothel.

By: Caty Simon

Caty Simon — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 20:43:30 +0000

In reply to Caty Simon. ...I wasn't thinking about the epilogue in enough of a solely French context, obviously.

By: Caty Simon

Caty Simon — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 20:42:32 +0000

A note–a French sex worker activist commented in reply to my posting this review on my Facebook page:
” about the end: “If Bonello wanted to draw a contemporary parallel to the employees of the maison close, an upscale escort would have been appropriate, or, even more accurately, again, a high earning Nevada brothel worker. All this stereotypical scene of street work does is say, “Hey, look, they’re both prostitutes, and they’re both inevitably unhappy!” I dont agree, the equivalent of a XIX century brothel worker is a street based sex worker in france. In France, a very large number of sex workers work in the streets, roads, forests …and it is the direct result of the closing down of brothel in 1946. France is extremely abolitionist and is unable to realise that it has some of the worst working conditions for sex workers in western europe, really hig level of violence etc… so i really see the last scene of the movie as a question to the viewers ” is it really better now?” ( with implied response “no” )”

Other viewers who commented on Facebook agreed with him, and after consideration, I have to agree with their alternate interpretation of the end of the movie–which does soften my judgement of Bonnello’s treatment of sex work. But the other problems I write about having with the movie remain.