FILM REVIEW: SPECIAL TREATMENT

Mind games

By Ed Rampell

Jeanne Labrune’s Special Treatment is in the tradition of Luis Bunuel’s 1967 disturbingly dark psychological look at prostitution, Belle de Jour. Unlike the youthful, preternaturally beautiful Catherine Deneuve’s prostitute in the latter, Isabelle Huppert -- an acclaimed French actress who has been a fixture on the cinema scene since the 1970s -- plays an over-the-hill hooker in Special Treatment. The specialty, so to speak, of her character, Alice Bergerac, is not so much in the physical pleasuring of her johns, but in role playing. Wigs, costumes, props, S&M, naive schoolgirl personas, scenarios and the like form the basis of Alice’s Kama Sutra technique.

What makes director/co-writer Labrune’s work especially intriguing is the film’s witty parallels to that other type of “treatment”: psychoanalysis. Alice’s sessions with her clients are intercut with the likewise high priced, 50-minute “hours” psychoanalysts have with their patients -- the call-girl’s form of therapy compared to that of the analysts’ “talking cure.” The role of the dominatrix is likened to that played by the analyst.

No shrinking violet, Alice goes on to have encounters with a variety of shrinks, including Xavier Demestre (Bouli Lanners), an overweight, overwrought, middle-aged  psychoanalyst experiencing marital problems with Helene (Valerie Dreville), who also seems to be in the psychiatry racket (uh, I mean profession). Xavier’s midlife crisis leads to his meeting Alice.

Although Special Treatment is about sexuality, it is not especially sexy, with little nudity and no steamy erotic scenes. It is more of a meditation on what makes people tick, sexually and otherwise. What motivates Alice and her johns, Xavier and his patients? Why does Alice do what she does and what does the 40-something whore want to do with the rest of her life? While Alice appears to be a free agent without a pimp or brothel exploiting her, she ultimately comes across as a sex slave of sorts, even if she is imprisoned by herself, instead of by organized crime. Alice Bergerac’s name is probably intended as a play on Cyrano de Bergerac, the lover of over endowed schnoz fame noted for using ruses when it came to romance.

LALIFF 2011: CUBAN FILMS

A scene from Chico & Rita.

Cubatopia

By Ed Rampell

The 15^th annual Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival is taking place in Hollywood through July 25, and the Hispanic-oriented film fete is screening a number of Cuban features and documentaries this year. They include: The nonfiction works Los 100 Sones Cubanos (100 Cuban Songs); the nonfiction, hip-hop themed Revolution about El Band Aldo, which, according to LALIFF, is censored in Cuba; the surfing doc, Havana Surf; the animated feature with music, Chico & Rita; and Boleto a Paraiso (Ticket to Paradise).

Director/co-writer Gerardo Chijona’s unforgettable, riveting Ticket to Paradise helps to redefine so-called “socialist realism,” which, under the Stalinists, was often neither “socialist” nor “realist,” but frequently propagandistic in the crudest sense Instead of brawny proletarians and peasants riding shiny tractors in a workers’ paradise, viewers of the ironically named Ticket to Paradise will see images of: AIDS, prostitution, drug use, suicide, sexual abuse/ incest, crime, homosexuality, graphic nudity, sex acts, homelessness, dumpster diving, alienated youth, underground heavy metal concerts, Cuba’s counterculture, etc.

The feature is set during the 1990s’ so-called “Special Period,” after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although Cuba lost its greatest economic supporters, Havana’s U.S.S.R. and Comecon East Bloc allies, the socialist David still had to contend with that Yanqui Goliath only 90 miles away. 

A Spanish-Cuban co-production made with the participation of the official ICAIC (Instituto Cubano del Arte y la Industria Cinematográficos), Ticket to Paradise is far more hard hitting than any Hollywood, theatrically released feature dealing with AIDS, teen sexuality, etc., I can think of, including 2003’s powerful Thirteen, starring Holly Hunter as a beleaguered mom of a teen gone wild. 

If there is a propagandistic element to the frank Ticket to Paradise it could be in the depiction of these excellent medical facilities, with their motivated, benevolent doctors and nurses, which reminded me of the New Deal camp the Joad family visited in the 1940 John Ford classic, The Grapes of Wrath. Even during the severe deprivations during the depths of the Special Period revolutionary Cubans somehow provided free healthcare for the least of those amongst them -- something bourgeois America has yet to do.

The ensemble cast delivers powerhouse performances, notably Miriel Cejas as Eunice, the runaway teen sexually molested by her father, and her longhaired boyfriend Alejandro (Hector Medina). Chijona deftly directs them and has created a searing cinematic work reminiscent and in the best tradition of the self critical trend of Cuban cinema, as exemplified by Tomas Gutierrez Alea’s 1968 classic, Memories of Underdevelopment. Like his motion picture predecessor, Chijona has made a most memorable movie, one that further develops, refines and redefines socialist realism.

Hopefully, the senseless 50-year-old blockade and embargoof Cuba will end soon so, among many other reasons, American moviegoers can have the right to buy tickets to see more great films, like Ticket to Paradise.