THE SCHOOL OF FLESH (L'ECOLE DE LA CHAIR) (Stratosphere) Starring: Isabelle Huppert, Vincent Martinez, Vincent Lindon, Marthe Keller. Screenplay: Jacques Fieschi, based on the novel by Yukio Mishima. Producer: Fabienne Vonier. Director: Benoit Jacquot. MPAA Rating: R (sexual situations, nudity, adult themes, drug use) Running Time: 101 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Film stories of improbable obsession are always tricky because they're so...well, so improbable. In a novel, it's easier to delve into tangled psychology through interior monologue or prose -- to understand, for instance, why a middle-aged man destroys his life for a teenager called Lolita. There is also the secondary problem of giving a face to the object of desire, creating the possibility that the obsession just won't make any sense. A film about irrational passions has to immerse a viewer in that irrationality, even as it gives you some small sense that the irrationality is based on something understandable.
Benoit Jacqot's THE SCHOOL OF FLESH (L'ECOLE DE LA CHAIR) struggles in both respects. It's the story of Dominique (Isabelle Huppert), an unmarried Paris fashion executive at a point in her life when her career is the focus of her life. That changes one night when she spies a bartender named Quentin (Vincent Martinez) at a local nightspot, and becomes fascinated with him. Though Quentin's transvestite co-worker Chris (Vincent Lindon) warns Dominique that Quentin is a hustler -- indiscriminate of gender -- Dominique still invites him to dinner, and eventually to bed. Soon Dominique has made Quentin a "kept man," sharing her apartment and money with him even though he continues to lead his previous life. Their relationship twists and turns into something neither one can quite identify, though both need it desperately.
Exactly why they need it is not entirely clear. The script, based on a novel by Japanese author Yukio Mishima (THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA), does a decent job of painting Quentin as a troubled man who uses his body for his personal gain, then shows disdain for anyone who wants him for that body. Dominique is a more perplexing case. Isabelle Huppert effectively conveys a confident woman slowly becoming a paranoid mess, following Quentin on his rounds through the city. Jacquot's direction, however, keeps us too distanced from Dominique's obsession for it to make sense as anything more profound than a middle-aged fling. Though the narrative toys with the provocative notion that the childless Dominique is acting out a maternal fantasy as much as a sexual one, the script is too timid to attack that subtext. THE SCHOOL OF FLESH's academic detachment makes it difficult to feel her pain, whatever it might be.
It's even more difficult to understand why Vincent Martinez is the man who turns her world upside down. THE SCHOOL OF FLESH is not the first film to assert an unlikely man's attractiveness to women -- the entire Woody Allen oeuvre comes to mind -- but that doesn't make it any easier to accept this particular example. Though Martinez certainly isn't ugly, it's unlikely he'd be anyone's paradigm of masculine beauty; he most closely resembles a slightly more swarthy Joaquin Phoenix. Still, everyone in the film is smitten with Quentin: Dominique, Chris, a distinguised attorney (Francois Berleand), an impressionable teenage girl (Roxane Mesquida). Quentin's animal magnetism is central to THE SCHOOL OF FLESH's premise, yet I didn't notice enough magnetism to erase a computer disk.
THE SCHOOL OF FLESH still manages to be somewhat engaging, simply because the relationship dynamics are effectively portrayed. It's rather touching watching Quentin try to make Dominique admit she'd discard him if he were ugly; it's amusing watching Dominique struggle to balance her desire for Quentin with her embarrassment to be with him in public settings. Both central characters are intriguing enough to follow, but it's hard to watch them both degrade themselves when it's not clear enough why they're doing it. Obsession makes for great drama if the "why" is as important as the "what." THE SCHOOL OF FLESH leaves you wondering "why," as well as "why him."
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 flesh dances: 6.
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