Mubi Monday: My Sole Desire (2023)

When you make a film set largely in a strip club then you are, for better or worse, inviting comparison to a film so notorious that I don't even need to write the title here, especially for those reading this who Nomi so well already. This is a French film though, and the French can do much better with this kind of material. At least, that's what you would hope.

Louise Chevillote plays a young woman, Manon, who decides to try working at a strip club to make some decent money. She soon starts to enjoy herself, thrilled by the creativity and ability to control and manipulate the punters, helped by a colleague (Mia, played by Zita Hanrot) she starts to develop a strong connection with. Problems start to arise when it becomes clear that Mia already has a partner (played by Thimotée Robart), and when Manon starts to succumb to the seductive allure of higher earning potential from work outside the club.

Directed by Lucie Borleteau, who also worked on the story and screenplay with Clara Bourreau and Laure Giappiconi, this is a great mix of melodrama and eroticism. The lifestyle is shown in a surprisingly positive way, but it’s not completely safe and cosy. There are threats scattered around everywhere, from within and without the central group, but the way that the women deal with those threats allows viewers to see how they work together, maintain control, and grow closer as they metaphorically “circle the wagons” to ensure their safety.

Despite the obstacles and pitfalls placed in the script, the film generally feels like a positive one, in terms of both the sex work and the various ways in which the characters are motivated (some others frown while our lead keeps striving to earn more and more money, but she also does her best to help out someone she might not have any future with).

Chevillote and Hanrot are great in the lead roles, equally adept at handling the drama and the front and centre sexuality of their characters. They are always very believable, and the script allows them to be flawed without making them awful people, although I am sure some would argue that point. Robart also does well, but he’s saddled with a less interesting part to play. Everyone else works well. A handful of actresses portray other dancers in the club, each with their own style and/or problems, Pedro Casablanc runs the club with a steady and careful approach, and Sipan Mouradian is able to fall in love with our leading lady without seeming like a clueless schmuck.

A hugely satisfying experience from start to finish, My Sole Desire weaves a lot of artistry throughout what could have easily just been a sweaty and stain-covered mess of tired tropes and exploitation. Kudos to Borleteau, and all of her collaborators, for producing something far removed from that. This is, in fact, quite brilliant, and it’s just as equally about love and friendship as it is about sex and dancing.

9/10

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Mubi Monday: Happening (2021)

Based on a 2000 novel by Annie Ernaux, and set in 1960s France, this is a film that takes viewers back to a time when women found themselves struggling to access the option of abortion after falling pregnant during the wrong time of their life. Good job that is an old-fashioned and harmful scenario that has been consigned to the dustbin of history, eh. 

I am, of course, being a bit facetious. I decided to watch this film now because of the recent events that have unfolded int he USA, but that country isn’t the only one that seems determined to stop women from having a choice in what happens to their own bodies. There are many other countries that make it difficult, including some that are hypocritically criticising the USA right now.

Anyway, let’s get to the film itself. Anamaria Vartolomei plays Anne, a young woman who finds out that she’s pregnant. That isn’t what she wants, because it could affect her studies, and subsequently affect the rest of her life. But finding anyone to help her proves to be very difficult, especially with the legal penalties that could punish any medical professional for even hinting at abortion as an option.

Directed by Audrey Diwan, who also helped adapt the source material with a few others (including Marcia Romano as her main co-writer), this is a drama with a strong point to make, and it features at least two scenes that will make many viewers wince, especially female viewers. While those scenes feel shocking, they also feel sad and disturbing because of the circumstances surrounding them. Nothing is here JUST for shock value. It’s all showing the desperation and difficulty of a pained young woman seeing people around her close off options that will allow her to reclaim her life as her own.

There are many other people involved in this cast, and all do a good job, but the focus remains firmly on Anne, which rests the entire movie on the young shoulders of Vartolomei. So it’s a good job that Vartolomei is so great as the lead character, being presented as an absolutely normal and “non-special” woman who tries to keep herself balanced while her world whirls and tilts around her. She is, deliberately or not (and I think it is deliberate), almost a blank page for others to project things on to, someone who is defined by one moment that creates a chain reaction that may be impossible to stop. She is one woman, she is all women, although I am very well aware that there are many others who would have an even tougher time if pregnant and aiming to regain bodily autonomy and control over their own destiny. But there are still enough moments of massively depressing familiarity here for anyone who has ever felt their world shrinking around them as they stretched out to find life-saving assistance from anyone nearby.

Maybe more of a lesson than a full movie experience, Happening is no less worthwhile because of how it is presented. In fact, it’s arguably more worthwhile, it’s a film that has standard moments of drama to simply string everything along in between the moments that it’s really designed to showcase.

I’m not sure if this will work for anyone who has a very strong “pro-life” stance, but you should try to get them to watch it anyway. Because we need to keep trying to convince people to care about human lives post-birth as much as they care about fetuses that they somehow imagine wearing little hats and booties.

8/10

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