Film Review
With
À l'aventure,
director Jean-Claude Brisseau concludes his provocative erotic trilogy,
not so much with a bang as with an overly intellectualised analysis of
female sexuality which makes an Open University lecture on quantum
physics look like kindergarten stuff. After
Choses Secrètes (2002)
and
Les Anges exterminateurs
(2006), Brisseau's latest attempt to enlighten us on the mysteries of
sex looks suspiciously like a highbrow re-make of Just Jaeckin's
Emmanuelle
(1974). By throwing in a few tonnes
of pseudo-mystical posturing, Brisseau presumbly thought he could give
his film at least a veneer of art house respectability and so prevent
it from being marketed exclusively to the dirty mac brigade.
In fact, what is presented as a woman's search for sexual fulfilment outside the
confines of bourgeois respectability is little more than a pretext for
pornographic self-indulgence of the dullest kind.
Although Brisseau tries hard to make this more than just a high-blown
piece of erotica he doesn't quite pull it off (so to
speak). The film's artistic flourishes (which include some
appropriately moody location photography) are not enough to elevate it
much beyond the level of tacky porno trash. Had the
characters been more than just bland caricatures with a morbid
fascination for Sade the film might have stood some chance of looking
less like smut for intellectuals and more like an honest exploration of
human desire. Far from breaching the sexual taboos as he
intended, Brisseau merely reinforces one's prejudices against the
erotic film, a deservedly reviled genre which, thanks to the internet,
is now well and truly dead in the water.
© James Travers 2010
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Film Synopsis
Sandrine is bored with her comfortable middle-class existence in a dull
provincial town. Finally, tired of the daily rituals and the
endless compromises that constrain her freedom, she leaves her home and
her boyfriend and sets out in search of adventure. She gets to
know a young psychiatrist who happens to share her thirst for passion
and self-fulfilment through the most intense sensual experiences...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.