People are voting emotionally.

just watch it!

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

This movie is boring! It's one of those movies that seems like it will get better and turn around at the very next scene, but that never happens. It just drags on with no dialogue, no character development, and really nothing worth waiting for. Everything is suggested, drama included. If ever there was a 'nothing' movie this is it. Writing ten lines to review this film is almost as much a waste of time as it was watching it. The movie has but two redeeming qualities that get a viewer to its end. One is that it looks good. Everything about this film says visually "hey this is a good movie," when in fact it isn't. The only other thing in the film worth noting is that there is a panther. That's it. Panthers are cool.

This is one of the best films of 2012. When it hits ex rental, this is one I'm definitely buying. It's a highly erotic period piece movie, that is ultimate viewing. It's a hypnotic film of this upper class french brothel in the last months 0f 1899. Some of our beauties are being sold to other brothels, others are leaving the business, where the remaining are facing a far worse fate, when health checks come into play, nearing the film's final. The last scene is kind of a teaser, showing what brothels are like today. The acting is bloody impressive from all, it's lavish sets, and wardrobe, adds to it's tasty viewing. We even have a sixteen year old, starting, a virgin, one of her first, double minded, about going with her. He finally does, here she ends up losing it in a champagne bath, later washing all the icky ailment off. This lass's interview with the madam that has her stripping off totally, then letting her hair loose, is very hot indeed. We do too have that one dangerous customer (it's always the quiet ones) who leaves a scarring impression on one of the prostitutes, by slitting the corners of her mouth open, where she now wears a joker kind of smile, 24-7 and has now resorted to mainly working as a housemaid. Some of the client's requests, are as you can guess, out of the ordinary, one girl pretending to be a robotic doll, where a handsome young french man comes up behind her, lifts up her dress and you know. At the the start of this somewhat bizarre scene's, where he's lying down, staring across at her, if transfixed, somewhat playing the role too, is an unforgettable image. The dialogue in subtitle is smart and original. A truly hypnotic movie experience, this is one those films that comes along every so often, a rare gem, a rare treat to the naked eyes. Highly recommended, especially for lovers of foreign erotica.

No matter the titillating title, writer/director Bertrand Bonello's 'House of Pleasures' doesn't hope to pleasure its audience by pandering to their baser instincts through a flesh parade of its predominantly female cast. Instead, Bonello mounts a sombre look at the daily lives and routines of the prostitutes within the walls of the Appolonide, an upmarket Paris brothel for middle-class men at the turn of the 19th century. The pace is slow and languid- consider this fair warning for less patient viewers- but if you allow it, the movie will reel you in with its hypnotic charm and leave you wondering about the people behind the world's oldest profession.Filmed with a deliberate dispassion throughout, Bonello flits from one character to another, never making one the central figure in the movie. Among those we get to recognise are Clotilde (Celine Sallette), a twelve-year veteran of the trade at just 28 years old who has recently grown increasingly disillusioned and dependent on opium; Pauline (Iliana Zabeth), the youngest at just 16 who enters the trade in a misguided attempt at asserting her own independence; and the middle-aged Madam (Noémie Lvovsky) who runs the house faced with foreclosure due to rising rent prices.Yes, Appolonide is far from a cocoon for the girls, and Bonello places two stark characters as a sobering reminder of that- the first in the form of a cheerful girl Julie (Jasmine Trinca) who discovers one day during a routine medical examination that she has syphilis; and the second in Madeleine (Alice Barnole), who is permanently disfigured when a client (Laurent Lacotte) she dreams of having a future with ties her to the bed and slashes her from both corners of the mouth. Madeleine is the most blatant Bonello gets at eliciting his audience's empathy for these women- and certainly, it's hard not to be moved when she is nicknamed 'The Woman Who Laughs' and becomes no more than an object of fascination for others to gawk at.Notwithstanding Madeleine's misfortune, there is little to cheer about for any of the other girls trapped with little hope of escaping their circumstance. Though visited by regulars with sweet words and buoyant promises, there is little illusion that none of these men are serious about their affections for the ladies they frequent, using them as mere vessels to act out their fantasies- one girl is made to act like a mechanical doll; while another is dressed in a kimono and asked to speak Japanese even though she knows not the language. We know better than to believe their lies and empty promises, but who can blame some of the ladies for being optimistic- what else after all do they have to live for?Setting most of the film within the four walls of the Appolonide and emphasising the day in and day our rituals of the women within adds to the claustrophobic feel of the movie, which of course reinforces the cheerless nature of their situation- there is also a reference to the conventional wisdom of the day, which equates their status to that of criminals by virtue of the size of their heads. The rare scene where the girls have the most fun is a daytime excursion they take to the countryside, which unsurprisingly shows them at their most lively and vivacious.And indeed, there is very little to cheer or find pleasure in- despite the movie's title- once one has observed the lives of these women in the Appolonide. The film is also purposefully set at the twilight of the industry in that form, and from time to time, Bonello hints at the imminent passing of a Parisian cultural icon. His parting shot is that of modern-day Paris, where prostitutes are standing by the street waiting for some random guy in a car to pick them up. Has society progressed in the past century? As long as there remain women who are stuck in the circumstance as those in the Appolonide, the answer quite honestly is a sobering no. www.moviexclusive.com

If you absolutely have got to know what life might have been like for prostitutes in Paris during the early 1900s then you've got to see this. For everyone else, there's nothing here to see.L'Apollonide is a classy palatial bordello. The prostitutes live and work there. They are under the soft yoke of the madam who sells them everything they need for a hefty price such that they are forever indebted to her and for some reason can't leave. We learn all the boring details of what their life is like- their hygiene routines, their exams with the physician, what they do to pass the time (not much). On some days, there are a bunch of children there. At night the clients arrive, and still little happens as they are happy to just sit around with the prostitutes and stare at each other, play board games, flirt, gossip. One of them brings a panther with him for some reason- a panther that doesn't age. When they get down to business it turns out all the clients have kinkyish proclivities.One of the prostitutes who has nightmares and visions actually ends up fulfilling them as one of her clients slashes her cheeks, making her unsuitable for regular work. Another ends up with syphilis and dies. We also meet a young girl who decides to join the staff, with the blessing of her parents somehow. The life is portrayed as a type of slavery and yet women join it voluntarily as way out? And the panther will deliver justice. The bordello also faces closure eventually. That is about it when it comes to a plot. The writer/director does his best to avoid telling a story. For instance, one of the girls will read the tarot cards to the others to answer questions. She interprets the past, the present, and when she gets to the future, the director cuts to something else. When there is action, it is almost filmed in slow motion, everybody moves with all the patience in the world in a calculated unnatural way, as if the actors are being overdirected.The movie looks pretty good, the longest and most commonly repeated scene of the prostitutes sitting around with clients looks like a living still life. Music and sounds are OK until we get near the end when suddenly we get loud anachronistic contemporary music. This movie is 2 hours long but it feels like 20 hours. I had to see it in two sessions.What is the point of the movie one asks oneself after sitting through this sedative? Other than being the writer/director's prostitute-adoration piece I can't think of any. It doesn't glorify prostitution but it doesn't humanize it either. One can't care for any of the prostitutes, they all look fairly alike and are not particularly attractive, let alone interesting. It doesn't vilify or humanize the clients either. The emotional tone of the movie is entirely flat throughout. One fears there is some brilliant message that one missed but after watching the behind-the-scenes feature where the director explains himself one can conclude that nothing was missed, there isn't anything to this movie. Somewhere hidden behind endless repeated scenes where nothing happens could have been a decent movie about the life and dreams of prostitutes during those Parisian times. But the director isn't interested in telling a story, he is obsessed with some images that he repeats in all his movies and that derail what could have been a story. If anything, this movie is a remarkable waste of effort, funds, and talent, and a lesson on how not to make a movie.