By Linda Winsh-Bolard
In a village close to London a middle aged widow Maggie watches her grandson Olly struggling with deadly disease while her son Tom is slowly growing apart from her and her daughter in law Sarah cannot stand her, or the pain she is suffering watching Olly slowly dying.
A new treatment is offered for Olly but with a catch: it means traveling to Australia. Who pays? screams desperate Sarah because they are poor and while the treatment is free, all other costs will have to be borne by the family.
Maggie, with no work history and in debt, chances on a card in a window of a Soho’ sex club offering a ‘hostess” position. The owner of the club, Mike, explains to her the euphemism of a “hostess” in sex industry. He also explains how much it pays.
Pressed by necessity, Maggie decides to give it a try.
The film gently, with no pretensions for highhanded morality, examines how a housewife might become sex industry worker. What real pressures will make women to take such jobs, and how some of them live. It also brings up the consequences for these women, should their families find out.
It fails to show the brutality, that more often than not, accompanies such work.
Maggie is protected by her booth and her employer, who while taking a share of her earnings, does not abuse her or endangers her. Nor does his competitor. Maggie is free to make her own choices. Her friend Lisa loses her job, but again, there is no further abuse. Mike is a nice man who “hated to be poor”. His club is just business to him. The women employees.
The fear and shame that Maggie experiences, and largely overcomes, are of public exposure, of becoming a pariah in her own community. Her biggest terror is that of losing contact with her grandson.
I am not sure that real sex workers are in the same situation.
But then perhaps we are not meant to perceive the story as one of prostitution only. The film has its share of sordid life, but with some comedy and some irony mixed in it, and the general tone is based not on brutality of the underworld but hypocrisy of small bourgeoisie.
Perhaps it is an examination of love, sacrifice and life limited, from birth, by lack of opportunities, but not by lack of loyalty or responsibilities. Maggie is, as many of the critics pointed out, a middle aged frumpy woman, and hence of no consequence to anybody. But the film questions this lack of value, however obliquely, by giving Maggie growing sense of self-recognition, once she receives the respect her “special skill” earns her in the sex business. Let’s not forget that this middle aged frumpy beats the young bodies at their own game.
Of course, for Americans the true wonder lies in the free medical treatment in Britain, and in the fact that Maggie, while not working, has safe, adequate housing and normal life.
Marianne Faithfull as Maggie is fantastic. The nuances of what her character feels, how she copes, are perfectly communicated, often by miniscule facial changes while her composure is constant. Miki Manojlovic, as Mike, is equally good, the man who became an operator of a sleazy club because he wanted more than just to survive. They are both faultlessly lost and yet never giving up. The range of emotions between them, the trepidation of having to tell, to share and to deal with the unknown in life is beautifully portrayed by both of them.
The film does not give equal opportunity to the younger generation. Luisa (Dorka Gryllus), who left an abusive husband and takes care of her child alone, is beaten by life and fighting to survive but her story is cut short. Tom (Kevin Bishop) is tired of “being always told what he has to do” and tired of the bleak future, but again his time on the screen is limited.
That is a pity, not only because they are both good actors, but also because the attempts to make the story real rather than a bunch of worn out cliché would have come through better had the film branched a little further pass the main characters.
It is classically shot and staged, dreary village and sleazy sex scenes intercut with cold impersonal train stations and strained families. It is to the director’s credit that while number of naked bodies is shown, the detachment and coldness of sex for money is clear without ever being overtly spoken of. Few achieved such clarity of dehumanized flesh trade.
Entre Chien et Loup, Pyramide International
Director by Sam Garbarski
Screenwriters: Martin Herron, Philippe Blasband
Based on an original script by: Philippe Blasband
Producer: Sebastien Delloye
Cinematographer: Christophe Beaucarne
Editor: Ludo Troch
Music: Ghinzu
Cast:
Maggie: Marianne Faithfull
Miki: Miki Manojlovic
Tom: Kevin Bishop
Sarah: Siobhan Hewlett
Luisa: Dorka Gryllus
Jane: Jenny Agutter
Olly: Corey Burke
Julia: Meg Wynn-Owen
Beth: Susan Hitch
Edith: Flip Webster
Shopkeeper: Tony O'Brien
Art: Jules Werner
Old Women: Ann Queensberry, June Bailer
Dave: Jonathan Coyne
Franck: Tim Plester
Dunia: Malina Ebert
