Les Choses Secretes (Secret Things)
Few films that have a lot of sex in them are ever very good. Catherine Breillat films manage to jump over the mark and so has LES CHOSES SECRETES, another of Tartan’s Cine Lumiere collection, a showcase of innovative and provocative contemporary French films. This one concerns two down on their luck women who team up, in more ways than one, to enact revenge on the male run corporate world....
Few films that have a lot of sex in them are ever very good. Catherine Breillat films manage to jump over the mark and so has LES CHOSES SECRETES, another of Tartan’s Cine Lumiere collection, a showcase of innovative and provocative contemporary French films. This one concerns two down on their luck women who team up, in more ways than one, to enact revenge on the male run corporate world, by sleeping their way to the top by attempting to manipulate everyone in sight.
It starts in a yuppy night club, where Nathalie is performing a masturbatory dance on stage. The new bar girl, Sandrine, via a voice over tells us how much she admires someone who can express themselves so freely in front of other people. By the end of the night the two women are in the bar with the boss, who is making advances on Sandrine. Nathalie tells Sandrine that she doesn’t have to do anything if she doesn’t want to. An argument arises and both girls end up with the sack. They both go back to Nathalie’s house, where Sandrine confesses how brave and how much she admires Nathalie for doing what she does performing in front of people. One thing leads to another and Sandrine ends up in bed masturbating, whilst Nathalie talks her through it and watches. The two sort of become a couple and walk through the streets and perform all kinds of lewd public acts.
Meanwhile they both decide to get jobs. After finding this more difficult than they expected they decide to formulate a plan to get a legitimate job and then through sex, manipulate their way to the top and destroy as many important men as they can en route. They both land jobs at Barnays, a company run by a womaniser, and son of the sick boss, Christophe. We then depart from Nathalie who is working in the human resource department and follow Sandrine. She starts playing around with the important male figures in her office but refuses to use sex at this point, as she is using her charms to make her way up the company. When she becomes personal secretary to the head of her department she commences an affair with him. Whilst this is going in, we get the sense that Nathalie is also working her way through other important men in the company.
Without going into too many more details Christophe enters the film. This is when the all Sandrine’s and Nathalie’s plans start to divert. The film now becomes a power play on who is manipulating who. Christophe, who surely has to rank as one of the top screen bastards, starts to play a predominant part in the rest of the film. Sandrine soon starts to understand that things are not quite as they seem, even though she still decides that Christophe is so handsome that she will do anything to sleep with him. She still believes that she can control any situation that she is a part of. However, even though she has been warned about Christophe (and what an introduction he gets, even though he is not on screen) and how he has driven women to suicide, she still persists. This leads to a final sequence. Or the end game, where we encounter threesomes, an orgy, a wedding, some incest and some death, followed by a satisfying ending.
The direction by Jean Claude Brisseau seemed to be handled like a seasoned pro, making scenes that could just have been crap titillation seem much more involved, imbued with a higher purpose and intelligence. The way the sex scenes are entwined with the unfolding narrative was excellent. Also, all of the actors give great performances, especially the two female leads, one of whom has appeared in very few films. However, the start of the show was Fabrice Deville as Christophe. Not only does he come across as the type of selfish, cold, manipulative scum bag that he is playing but somewhere in the background of his performance he has a small comic tone that exaggerates his performance to one of the more memorable screen ‘son of a bitches’. The photography was also superb, again making scenes that could just be ‘trousers around your ankles’ material into something much more provocative and even profound in places. Although similarities to EYES WIDE SHUT are clear, in no way are we in the same narrative or story territory, but the look could be something to do with it. Both films make use of the deep red and purple backgrounds and both films are presented as full screen on their DVD releases.
The picture quality, although as mentioned above is presented in full screen, is excellent. The sound comes in the usual Tartan three, Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo, 5.1 surround and DTS 5.1. I listened to the Dolby 5.1 surround and found it to be crisp and well distributed, in such a way that it actually adds to the experience and atmosphere of the film, as well as the sound design being excellent. The DVD is also region 0, so it can be played on DVD’s around the world.
Unfortunately this DVD release has no extras at all, other than the obligatory set of trailers that DVD’s always seem to have. However, as the film is pretty good, this isn’t the biggest drawback in the world, but it is always nice to have something extra to watch.
All in all this is clever filmmaking. Brisseau is both the writer and director, and as with all the cleverest writer/directors this film has something that many other films don’t. It is clever, surprising, erotic in places and rarely misses a beat. As an audience we are being presented with only the necessary amount of information to keep us up to speed and guessing at the same time. The acting is great and the sex really adds to the depth of what we are watching. The ending does tend to move into quite profound areas and in places mythological territory but it all adds up to a film with a strong plot and narrative. Although by the end the plot seems less relevant than the narrative, foregrounding both in a film in this way is very clever. To be brutally honest I thought this was going to be a heap of garbage but what I got was more than a surprise. Although it is no masterpiece, this is definitely one to see. It is good head food and a further example of sex being used in an intellectual way in films. Definitely one to rent and even to buy if you see it a reasonable price. Check it out
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