Secret Things

Rating:
Summary: Explicit Exploration of Sexual Power.
Review: "Secret Things" (Choses Secrètes) explores the desires, ambitions, and obsessions that lie beneath the surface of everyday behavior. Specifically, life in the business world conceals a host of psychosexual games. Nathalie (Coralie Revel) is a worldly erotic performer and Sandrine (Sabrina Seyvecou) is the fresh-faced bartender at a Paris club. When they both lose their jobs, they become roommates. Sandrine envies Nathalie's sexual self-confidence and abandon and is receptive to her lessons in life, sex, and manipulation. The two women set out to climb the socio-ecomomic ladder by seducing an earnest, dedicated senior employee (Roger Mirmont) at a company where they have both found employment The plan comes with some risk -in the form of the company's slick, megalomaniacal heir (Fabrice Deville)- that they may fall victim to their own machinations.

Sandrine narrates this bizarre tale of sexual power. The story could be told without voiceover narration, but, since it is essentially the story of Sandrine's self-discovery, the narration doesn't seem gratuitous and is only a little bit lazy. Probably the most helpful thing that I can say about "Secret Things" is that it is a film for certain tastes. This is talky, introverted, neurotic, psychosexual gobbledygook. It is French, in other words. There is a great deal of lesbian sex and nudity. The ideas presented in "Secret Things" are not original, but most of the film is sufficiently seductive and unpredictable to keep the audience wondering how it will all turn out. That is not to say that it is realistic. There is a point at which the story goes over the top and, in my view, becomes laughably baroque and uninteresting. But "Secret Things " is generally enjoyable if you like heavy-handed, explicit treatises on sexual power. In French with English subtitles.

The DVD: Bonus features include a "Photo Gallery" featuring stills from the movie and a text "Director Biography and Filmography".

Rating:
Summary: Overheated, pretentious...and maybe worth a look
Review: I had first heard about Jean-Claude Brisseau's SECRET THINGS from eminent film critic Roger Ebert, who reviewed the movie on one episode of his EBERT & ROEPER show and gave it a thumbs-up, saying that it was one of those rare erotic films that was also well-made and fascinating. Being a 19-year-old horny college student myself (hehehe), I became rather interested in seeing this film when it came out on DVD. Now that I have, my reactions to it is decidedly mixed. I was frustrated while watching it, but after it was over I rather admired it for its sheer ambition.

SECRET THINGS is basically about two women's attempt to try to climb up the business ladder at a company by seducing their way up. Seems like a simple-enough plot...except that, in the hands of Brisseau, it leads to twists and turns that can best be described as surreal and over-the-top. What turns out to be an unassuming little drama about sex and power becomes what you might call a morality play, one that is heavy with atmosphere and symbolism. Who would have known that a scene in which one of the characters sits in a chair at her office and quietly masturbates in front of her boss would eventually lead to a scene set in what seems like some kind of mansion/dungeon in which a lot of people engage in a mass orgy?

It wasn't that I necessarily minded Brisseau's blatant descent into this kind of expressionism; my problem was simply that much of it came to seem too pretentious. The increasingly heavy-handed dialogue, the portentous Baroque music of the soundtrack, the all-too-obvious symbol of the woman draped in black with the bird on her right shoulder---all of that reeked of a writer-director that seemed too much in love with his own wit. There's clever, and then there's too clever, and Brisseau flirts frequently with coming off as too clever for his own good: all that self-conscious trickery risks obscuring whatever message he's trying to convey. It's as if he's laughing at the fate of his own characters, keeping his emotional distance as he eventually destroys them.

All of that may sound like I do not like this movie very much. And yet, after I finished watching it and reflected a bit upon it, I realized what perhaps Brisseau was getting at with all of this over-the-top style. The movie at first seems to be about female empowerment, as the two main female characters Nathalie (Coralie Revel) and Sandrine (Sabrina Seyvecou) hatch their scheme to try to get to the top. But SECRET THINGS turns out to be something a little more universal and a little less gender-specific: it's about how the quest for power can corrupt the soul, can make you a little less human. Perhaps it is telling that Sandrine, who admits that she has never come with another man, finally reaches orgasm with the evil Christophe (Fabrice Deville), the arrogant, cocky young ladykiller who is all set to inherit the business from his ailing father. Sandrine herself has gone so far in her quest to climb the corporate ladder that in the process she loses her innocence and ideals about love and rejects Delacroix (Roger Mirmont), her boss at the office, as a mere "weakling" instead of realizing that he is truly in love with her. Nathalie, on the other hand, starts out as cynical about love in the movie, but slowly starts shedding that cynicism as she starts falling in love herself. The ending of the film, contrary to what some people have said about it, is perfectly logical in the context of Brisseau's exploration of the search for power as highlighting the dark night of the human soul.

In the end, as I began to put the pieces of this movie together, I began to develop some more admiration for what Brisseau pulled off in SECRET THINGS. Power as a corrupting force is not a breathtakingly original theme to movies (look at what happened to Tony Montana in Brian De Palma's SCARFACE), but Brisseau explores it in a daring, boldly original, and even relevant, way that certainly will fascinate you even if it occasionally frustrates you. Most viewers will probably find this film to be overheated and almost insufferably pretentious; but, look a little deeper, and perhaps the style of the film and its substance will come together in a way that will make you respect it, if not necessarily love it. I think SECRET THINGS is worth a look, despite reservations.

Rating:
Summary: EDITED
Review: This DVD is edited from the original version. This movie is HOT, the cut DVD is NOT.

Rating:
Summary: Secret Things Uncover Erotica at It's Finest
Review: When I saw this movie in the theater many months ago, I knew that I would be the first to order the DVD when it came out. Sitting in the theater, I was awestruck with the incredible beauty of the actresses. Without falling into the usual pit of porn, this movie sets out to be a focus of characters willing to do anything to get ahead, and yet, find that their own traps can be reversed and cage themselves in an erotic story of voyeruism with a touch of S & M.

Women who are turned off the graphic sex scenes will find this movie to be stimulating and intriguing. The sex scenes are done with taste and eloquence.

Why four stars instead of five? The final chapter of this movie, unfortunately, falls into an inplausable ending as the characters appear to do uncharacteristic acts that appear (to me) to betray what they have spent the movie proving what they we were not.

The ending aside, I loved this movie and found it to be one of the most eroctic movies of the year.