Review No.158: House of Tolerance

As I watch some of the films on this list I often think about the titles given to them, which are usually fairly obvious, and how apt they are with my latest movie House of Tolerance being a case in point as I mainly had to tolerate it rather than really enjoy it. The House of Tolerance of the title is actually a Parisian brothel which we see at the dawn of a new century going through from 1899 to 1900 with changes afoot both for the management and the workers themselves. The opening scenes sees one of the prostitutes, Madeline, dream that a regular client will propose marriage to her however when she reveals this dream he is pleased but later in a rather dramatic scene cuts her open leaving her with a permanent scar. One year later we see Madeline is still working at the house but now as more of a chambermaid with her scar giving her the nickname 'The Girl who Smiles' however her odd facial feature does attract attention from a weirder section of society. We also meet Pauline a 16 year old who comes to the house looking to assert her independence however she finds out that the Madam likes to trap the girls early by having them rack up debts including the use of perfume to cover up the smell of previous clients. Then there's Julie one of the more upbeat members of the group who is taken of the rounds when it is discovered that she has syphilis and eventually the condition takes over her body. These stories are all set around the fact that these types of establishments are slowly dying out and the Madam of the house has to find to keep it open but ultimately fails selling off a few of the girls but the others have to make their own way. In the final scene, which I quite enjoyed, director Betrand Bonello takes us into the modern day into grainy footage of hookers parading the streets of Paris looking for men to pick them up in their cars.

This final scene is fairly memorable which is an adjective I wish I could apply to the rest of this film however as I mentioned boring scene followed boring scene and I just had to tolerate the fact that I had to sit and watch this for two hours. The main problem is that you can only watch men pay for sex and women frolic with wealthy gents for so long before it starts to get monotonous while I even found the sight of multiple breasts to be tiresome by the end of House of Tolerance. Another issue was that there was too many stories going on and none of the girls really got to develop that much as characters before we focused on somebody new with a problem of their own. Pauline's story is a case in point as I would've imagined she would've been the character we followed throughout as the rookie learning the ropes is an old school narrative technique however she leaves the brothel sometime before the end of the film. The most captivating story has to be that  of Madeline and her scar but that's mainly down to the fact that Alice Barnole is such a great screen presence that she makes you feel for her situation. Reading around on the film it seemed that Bonello wanted to make a film based around a character who had a scar that looked like a smile but realised that that wasn't enough to sustain a whole movie so padded it out with scenes of these girls together. While I quite enjoyed some of the small talk between the girls the scenes where they are enjoying swimming or eating breakfast together are almost eclipsed by the numerous scenes of them romping together. Bonello's best quality is his eye for detail so the main sets are lovely created as are the costumes, even though there not on very long, while the choice of a range of classical and modern music would usually annoy me but I think tracks like 'Nights in White Satin' and Lee Moses' Bad Girl No.1 work quite well. There's a lot of style here but not much substance with too many plots, too much nudity and not enough conclusion there was a lot more that I to tolerate rather than enjoy however this still had a good ending, pardon the pun.

Verdict: Too many characters and too many scenes just there to put in as much boob as possible, House of Tolerance does have some good moments, is well-styled as well as having some decent performances but it is spoilt under a cloud of nudity which eventually became pure boredom so I will in the end give it a tolerable score of 4.5/10