École de la chair, L' (1998)

reviewed by
Harvey S. Karten


THE SCHOOL OF FLESH (L'Ecole de la chair)

Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Stratosphere Entertainment Director: Benoit Jacquot Writer: Benoit Jacquot, novel by Yukio Mishima. Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Vincent Martinez, Daniele Dubroux, Marthe Keller, Vincent Lindon

As I was coming home from a screening of "The School of Flesh" the other night, I became part of a captive audience on the A train. Six young men seeking funds to buy uniforms entertained our car. They turned somersaults like acrobats from the Moscow Circus, stamped their feet like flamenco dancers at the Meson Madrid, and concluded their performance with some rap that could stand up pretty well next to Gilbert and Sullivan's patter songs. How different this boisterous merriment is from Benoit Jacquot's new feature film, his tenth, "The School of Flesh," which is known in French as "L'Ecole de la Chair." As Professor Henry Higgins once said, "The French don't care what they do, actually, so long as they pronounce it properly," and the Gallic folks in this escapade can certainly talk but they also do--the darndest things. The conversations in the movie are cultivated where the break dancers are disciplined but uninhibited. And where the dancers are nothing if not physical, the characters in this French drama mostly sit and discuss.

And yet how similar are the two diversions, since the principal individual in "The School of Flesh," a financially successful, well educated but bored and unfulfilled woman crosses the boundaries of age, culture and class to give herself over to pure sexual chemistry. As a woman running an exclusive atelier for wealthy customers seeking the very best in attire, Dominique (Isabelle Huppert), an outwardly demure woman of about forty, becomes strongly attracted to a youth of about twenty-five, Quentin (Vincent Martinez). Comfortable financially, she lives in a pristine apartment virtually devoid of furniture or accoutrements that could be considered of sentimental worth. Her new paramour earns his living as a gay hustler on the streets of Paris. The two meet at a Paris bar catering to both gays and straights, where Quentin is serving as a bartender. His friend Chris (Vincent Lindon), a transvestite, will later reveal what he knows about Quentin to Isabelle, who is out on the town with her friend (Daniel Dubroux). By taking us through the association between Quentin and Isabelle, director Benoit Jacquot means to show us what binds such different individuals for a relatively brief but intense duration.

When young, rugged Quentin plays cruel power games with his new partner, as when he takes her after a dinner engagement to a video-game parlor and then refuses to leave, we're meant to see that he is a vulnerable person testing the limits of Isabelle's affection. When Quentin asks Isabelle whether she would love him even if he lost an arm, a leg, or other important body parts, he is similarly verifying her fondness for him as though he were terrified of being abandoned. For her part Isabelle, who is bankrolling the young man's debts without his knowledge and playing the perfect sugar daddy, will not tolerate Quentin's declasse habits. When he lifts his sea bass in a fashionable restaurant to test its freshness, she barks at him to put it down because "you're with me." And needless to say, Quentin is not at all comfortable in the company of Isabelle's rich friends and customers in her atelier, acting as does the petty thief George Dyer with artist Francis Bacon in John Maybury's film, "Love is the Devil."

Since the relationship does not exist in a vacuum, Jacquot furnishes us a roundelay of social contacts who have a bearing on the unusual relationship of the two people. A businessman (Bernard Le Coq) who shows interest in Isabelle fails to turn her head away from Quentin, while Quentin's eye for the rich, teenaged Marine Thorpe (Roxane Mesquida) threatens to break up Dominique's affair with the brash young hustler.

What is especially involving is that Jacquot has his performers relate their tale not only by talk but by subtle gestures, each of which bespeaks a novel--as they say. A look here, a tear there; a glance by one lover in the direction of a third party, a signal of a second or so that reveals a person's social class beyond uncertainty. Caroline Champetier photographs the piece clearly, if conventionally, with a particularly arresting view of the main square of Marrakesh. Luc Barnier's editing is abrupt, as though to point out the sharp turns that the relationship frequently takes.

Isabelle Huppert is well cast in the role of a sexually contained woman of the upper middle class who is at a stage that Americans would call mid-life crisis. A major French actress with roles to her credit since 1971, Huppert has the quality of both pallid features and a personality that seems numbed to the world's pain. She lacks the versatility that made Isabelle Adjani so heartbreaking in "The Story of Adele H," but in this picture, Jacquot--who has apparently directed her to show a combination of confidence and apprehension-- has made the fitting choice.

Sexual attraction can cause people to bear themselves in the most unpredictable manner and has been the leading motivator of literary pieces since an understandably jealous Clytemnestra did in her husband, Agamemnon and Medea took revenge on a wandering Jason. "The School of Flesh" is a commendable, if more unobtrusive, addition to the genre.

Not Rated.  Running Time: 105 minutes.  (C) 1999
Harvey Karten

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