Languid exhaustion. Service workers at the Eyes Wide Shut orgy. Punching the clock in a 19th century bordello to pay off never-ending debts. Even the madam taking the money has to deal with rental negotiations. Sadness flows as the rot continues to set in. Well-dressed men acting the part of dilettantes, patrons and artists, using financial and social privilege to control. The potential for emotional and physical violence hanging over everything. “The Woman Who Laughs”, and the Women Who Cry.
House Of Tolerance (2011) is my second Bertrand Bonello after Nocturama (which I thought was great). There’s a fantastic ensemble cast for this collective character, a group hang-out tainted with despair. An involving sense of mood through the costumes, interior design and use of editing. Compositions elegantly framing the group together, entertaining their clients, and then the camerawork searching the waiting room for the interactions. Anachronistic touches like split-screens and contemporary music. Weeping and dancing to ‘Nights In White Satin’.
In some ways the film is an extension of an art tradition; while eschewing any sense of eroticism, it uses cinema to expand the painting tradition of sad and tired girls, lying on a couch or sleeping in a bed. Wastrels and waifs. I don’t know if it escapes some of the cliches regarding sex worker representation, or deconstructs the male gaze. Yet House Of Tolerance does invest in the solidarity of coworkers, a community of the oppressed getting through the night for the morning where they are free to rest. Free from men, and their financial prison. The relief of being able to get outside and jump into a lake together. Sad and strange, unfolding with a capacity to surprise or disturb as the days and years and even centuries drift away.
Available to stream on SBS On Demand. Recommended.
VHS Tracking 