Maison Close - Season 1 [DVD]

The world’s oldest profession, as some call it, is a grim one. There can be few happy exchanges between people paired randomly, arbitrarily — strangers placed in a condition of intimacy who have no intimate feelings for one another. The situation is abnormal, false, loaded from the start, a commercial transaction where male passion and female desperation mutually exploit one another. The man is satisfied, if only fleetingly; the woman pays her bills, feeds her children, gets her medical check-ups. That is all. God and morality do not enter into it. They aren’t needed. It’s a spiritual, psychological problem, not a moral one, hideous and degrading if you stop to think about it.This fine French series makes us stop to think about it.Are the women beautiful? It depends on definitions of beauty. It’s been said all happy women are beautiful. This is probably true. By this reckoning, then, these women are not, their beauty a commodity for display and sale. How does one sell beauty? The thought is a self-cancelling contradiction. Beauty and happiness for them is hidden from commerce. They are happy alone together in a kind of solidarity. They know each other and have few secrets, sharing things they would never share with men. Does this solidarity preserve a kind of dignity and self-respect? It must. How else could they carry on? How could they look in the mirror without feeling sick?If it’s depressing, maybe that’s part of the point. We should feel down at the sight of degradation and shame. Some will say it’s hypocrisy to feel pity for women in this situation. Choice and free will are the defence of these critics. No one forced the women at gunpoint to disrobe and provide carnal pleasures to men for a living. True, but only because guns were not needed. Society itself, or its structure, was forceful enough to be coercive. So, as usual, it’s also a political matter. Men, with the upper hand, determine the economic rules of the game. Women take what they can, which isn’t much, true to an old historical form and pattern. In the 19th century this was understood, unquestioningly accepted. Or, better said, the questions were met with silence or hostility, so they were not raised. Men could afford to shrug, as they held the power.That’s the set-up here in this sumptuous palace of pleasure. The Madam is a go-between, a middle-woman, a kind of usurer who exploits both client and employee. She’s the one, winning at both ends, whose soul is soiled the most. No one loves her but that’s fine. Like Faust of old, she sold her soul long ago for other rewards. Compared to money, love is nothing, an empty promise and illusion. She’s learned to live with her greed and cynicism, self-interest the heart of everything now.Shelled heavily at the end of the Franco-Prussian War, Paris was a defeated place in 1871. Such wreckage adds to the gloom of Le Paradis, the pleasure palace where much of the drama takes place. The devastation of the city might even be seen as a metaphor for it psychologically, as many of the people look shattered, exhausted, worn out, especially the women. It was also a time of tremendous political turmoil, which happens periodically in French history. Workers radicalised in the Paris Commune of that year rose against the government of Emperor Napoleon III, toppling it. The Third Republic, its replacement, therefore became the one defeated by the Prussians. The atmosphere of the time was one of disillusionment and disgust, the eastern provinces of Alsace and Lorraine wrenched from France by the Germans, adding to national shame.A young pretty rose by the name of Rose has come to Paris from the provinces. She’s perhaps 19 and is trying to locate her mother, a former prostitute. She has heard of Le Paradis and has come to it, hoping to obtain information about her mother, including her whereabouts. Encamped outside, she sits patiently and waits for word about her mother. A handsome young painter named Edgar offers help. He knows the Madam inside Le Paradis. He seems kind and benevolent, though appearances can be misleading. In fact, he’s self-serving, interested in money, not her, a common affliction among those both inside the house of pleasure and those who frequent it. Money can buy anything, including a semblance of love.Rose is trusting and naïve, her innocence exploited by Edgar. Painter he may be, but he’s also a pimp, or behaves like one. He haggles with Marguerite Fourchon, an assistant of Hortense Gaillac, the Madam. Edgar’s selling price is 250 francs. Marguerite will not go that high. Edgar settles for 200. So that is the debt Rose must pay off, not including room and board, once she is abducted, which she is. But this happens to her in a haze of wine in which her mind is partially lost. She took part in a banquet in the main hall of Le Paradis. Lamb and venison and duck were eaten, and wine was copiously drunk. No one told her, of course, that she would be paying her share. It was a ruse, a trap. She offers Marguerite four francs and says she will pay the rest when she meets her brother who is staying at a local hotel. Four francs! Marguerite is outraged and doubts the brother even exists. Rose will have to spend the night and they will discuss it in the morning. Morning comes. Rose demands to be set free, demands to see the police. Marguerite accompanies her to the police station. The chief constable is unsympathetic. Looking for her mother in a brothel? What sort of story and mother is that? No good-looking, healthy girl of 19 enters a brothel for a reason like that. She is just too ashamed, poor country girl, to admit her purpose. So, her petition is denied, sexism and male chauvinism winning out. She is given three choices: prison, the workhouse or Le Paradis. There is no finer house of pleasure in Paris than Madam Galliac’s home, the chief constable smilingly adds. The rooms are sumptuous and the feather beds soft. He says it with a conviction born of what sounds like experience.Véra is a prostitute of about 35. She’s been in the trade for over 15 years. She wants out. She has always wanted out, and now her time has come, it seems. A rich client, Baron du Plessis, has fallen for her, a helpless recipient of her carnal charms and magic. He will provide for her, setting her up for life as his mistress, finally freeing her from the grasping greed of Madam Gaillac. But life is never so easy and complications will ensue.Madam Gaillac herself is not free from complications, her house of ill-repute in hock to an extortionist who is squeezing her. Her emotional life too, such as it is for one so miserly and cold-hearted, is in turmoil. She adores someone — a woman, not a man. Men have never been good for anything but coughing up money. She holds them in contempt. It’s her own sex, the fairer sex, that has all the redeeming, comforting virtues in life.The brothel in French literature is largely the domain of the male writer, its female inhabitants seen through both rose-tinted spectacles and the erotic-romantic ideals of imagination. They are either perfumed nymphs, fallen angels, deflowered beings or seen negatively as temptresses — tramps, trollops, dolly birds, whores. Either way, they exist to test and tempt men, to sully, degrade and bestialise him. He was a gentleman; now he is an animal. It is her doing, not his. He was innocent until he met her, the Bible confirming this. She and the serpent conspired to ruin paradise when he ate the poisoned apple of desire offered by her. Nor are the women seen even in neutral terms. They were never called or thought of as sex workers. This expression is modern and implies a degree of volition or choice by the woman, whether this is true or not depending on the particular case.Interestingly, too, by showing us this shadow world mainly through the eyes and stories of the women involved, it’s the men who are essentially seen as objects — clients, toys, suckers, their jingling coins or wads of cash lifted from them. When exploitation is mutual it’s sometimes hard to know which side is more exploited than the other.Much of the outdoor filming was done in Lisbon, whose narrow streets in the old quarter slightly resemble those of Paris in the 1870s, not that events often occur outside in this drama. Mostly we are cooped up with the women and their clients in the claustrophobic confines of the darkened Le Paradis whose rooms of scarlet, lavender and chartreuse are only brightened by candlelight or occasional sunlight.Men of course love women for many reasons. Our mothers loved us, if we were lucky, so we grew up learning from early on that they are loving beings, or can be. Most men are drawn to this image, sense and memory of feminine love. But sex complicates things. It’s a different sort of love, drawing on other powers. Negotiating it may not be easy for some men.Domestic love offers men the comfort and familiarity of home. It’s one reason marriage exists: for continuity, security, stability. Wife is the image of solidity. She’s the maternal head of household, an upstanding citizen and community member. She may be a mother too — is so in many cases. Woman as wife represents home for the man.The brothel is nothing like this. It’s a hidden, sinful, shameful world. Whether the man believes this or not, he carries the knowledge of it with him. Love there must be different and is. If it is sinful and shameful, abuse may be next. Men are generally tender with the women they love, not with those whom they don’t.Baron du Plessis might have been an exception. He may have convinced himself that he truly loved Véra. But we know what Véra feels for him. He’s a sap, a sucker. She loves his wealth, not him. Or, more accurately, she loves the portion of his wealth she is sure to secure if she consents to be his mistress. So, it’s difficult — love under these strange, strained, abnormal, unnatural conditions.No wonder the women are unhappy and find what little happiness they can with each other, not with the men. In a world of greater equality, would brothels cease to exist? Good question for the philosophers.

This 8-part (7 hour) French Series was filmed in 2010, and it's surprising that it hasn't appeared here sooner. At first glance this serial might look like a predictable tease-show, but this is one of the most enthralling historical dramas seen for a long time. It is set in Paris just after the fall of Napoleon III, and events centre on a brothel where the girls struggle to exist in a brutally exploiting environment. The merciless human realism in this tense drama lifts it out of its historical setting, and it has powerful dramatic truth.The first thing that strikes you about the Series is the marvellous lighting and photography. There are frequent after-dark scenes, and the magical way they are photographed is often breathtaking. There is pin-sharp focus on the characters, but the surrounding dark, and the shadows from lamps and candles are wonderfully realised. However, nothing is sentimentalised here, in the setting or the story. There is shabbiness, ugliness and disturbing cruelty, the realism is unvarnished. This is a closed world -as it looked before electricity changed the night. The superb costumes and sets provide a stunning picture of a hidden Paris in the 1870's, brought to very convincing life.The wonderful French actors in 'Maison Close' restore your faith in film-acting. We look for believable feeling in drama -and here, for once we find it ! Very well cast, the performances in 'Maison Close' are consistently true- almost nothing looks artificial or posed. This is acting from within, gripping the attention. We suddenly enter a shocking, desperate world, where real people are trapped on the edge of survival in an utterly ruthless setting.What happens to these people, much of it heartbreaking, holds the viewer from the start, and this has little to do with the sexy milieu, which (surprisingly) is not exploited but portrayed with unusual frankness. This Series is so full of authentic feeling that the sexual aspect becomes just part of the unfolding human story. This is sometimes very tough stuff, and may not be everyone's cup of tea -however this is an exceptional thriller from every point of view, don't miss it.