| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Noémie Lvovsky | ... | Marie-France | |
| Hafsia Herzi | ... | Samira | |
| Céline Sallette | ... | Clotilde | |
| Jasmine Trinca | ... | Julie | |
| Adèle Haenel | ... | Léa | |
| Alice Barnole | ... | Madeleine | |
| Iliana Zabeth | ... | Pauline | |
| Pauline Jacquard | |||
| Judith Lou Lévy | ... | (as Judith Lou Levy) | |
| Anaïs Thomas | |||
| Maia Sandoz | ... | (as Maïa Sandoz) | |
| Joanna Grudzinska | |||
| Esther Garrel | |||
| Xavier Beauvois | |||
| Louis-Do de Lencquesaing | |||
Life in an elegant Parisian brothel in the early twentieth century. The madam essentially owns the women: their expenses exceed earnings, they are in debt. They face problems of pregnancy, opium, age, and violent clients. One reads sociology at her peril. Occasionally, a client talks of marriage. There are also friendships and affection among the women. The madam is in a dispute with her landlord and calls on influential clients to help. There's a picnic one summer day, a wake, and an evening in masks. Have they expectations? In a coda, we watch a street scene in contemporary Paris. Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
I wouldn't have believed it, but it's true.
Beautiful naked women parade around the screen for just over two hours. And yet it is just plain tedious.
Nothing happens in this film. It's unrelievedly gloomy, the girls are all depressed, none of them like sex, and the men all want to do bizarre things with them.
We don't learn much about many of the girls.
We learn little or nothing about the legal or social system in which the maison close operated, i.e., what was legal and what was not.
I really do not understand what the point of the film was.
Avoid it.