Secret Things
Two young women try to climb the corporate ladder using their feminine wiles in this erotic melodrama from French director Jean-Claude Brisseau. At the beginning of the film, Nathalie (Coralie Revel) and Sandrine (Sabrina Seyvecou) work in a strip club, where Nathalie wows the customers with her dancing while Sandrine tends bar. After a fight with their boss, both of them are tossed out late one night. Sandrine, a newcomer to Paris, is late paying her rent and can't go back to her apartment, so Nathalie invites her to move in with her. They become lovers, and after occupying themselves for awhile by behaving very naughtily in public, decide to conquer the working world with their powers of seduction. They both find jobs at a seemingly normal company and choose as their target a mild-mannered middle-aged bureaucrat named Delacroix (Roger Mirmont). But the company has some kinky secrets of its own, personified by the owner's son Christophe (Fabrice Deville), a decadent nihilist with a very close relationship with his sister, in whom the women might have met their match. more..
Director: Jean-Claude Brisseau
Starring: Coralie Revel, Sabrina Seyvecou, Roger Mirmont, Fabrice Deville, Blandine Bury
A rare item these days: An erotic film made well enough to keep us interested. It's about beautiful people, has a lot of nudity, and the sex is as explicit as possible this side of porno.
The sensationalistic beginning and needless mumbo-jumbo ending aside, this is a female buddy film with bite.
While visually stylish and thematically ambitious, Secret Things is ultimately more preposterous than provocative, its vague explorations of sexual and class struggle failing to coalesce in a coherent manner.
It would be hard to mount a straight-faced defense of Brisseau's feverish moral tale, complete with a lurking angel of death, but the carnal machinations are hugely entertaining -- particularly if you like your skin with a bracing sermon chaser.
Stylish and gripping at times, this wry very-French gender satire is definitetly entertaining but falls down a little in the third act.
French Cineaste of the Year
Cannes Film Festival (2003)
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