House of Tolerance

There are no surprises in this French film eulogising the Belle Époque brothel. Its sights are firmly placed on the lush frills, drapes and ornaments. And the women, who are stuck in the house getting drunk every night and having to sleep with the same tiresome men over and over again. Everyone is too wasted to summon up any kind of wit or personality. Although there is camaraderie among the girls, the prevalent mood is one of grinding frustration and hopelessness.

The film is at its most gruesomely impactful when it slides into horror. The director Bertrand Bornello was inspired by a dream of a film (...very French, that. It's called A Man Who Laughs and I haven't seen it) to include a prostitute disfigured by one of her clients. The grim scars on her face are unsettling, and her assault is difficult to watch. The film begins with it and returns to it several times, and it adds a hint of menace to each gloomy shot of a dimly lit boudoir. There is prevailing sense of predators lurking behind every shadow, although in the end that one psycho turns out to be less lethal than the inevitable spectre of syphilis.

The film's use of symbolism is boringly obvious. You have your petals falling from white roses, and also a surrealistic shot of a whore weeping tears of semen (gross and also a bit ridiculous). It ends with video footage of sex workers in modern day Paris – the implicit question being whether today's streetwalkers have it worse than a hundred years ago. It's not something Bornello seems interested in answering, so asking it feels a bit pointless. But if you needed reminding that prostitution is dreary when it isn't actively frightening, this film does the trick.