Wild Side

Wild Side was one of the best movies at last year's Rotterdam Film Festival, and is a must see for the admirers of Lifshitz (Corps overt, Les). The title refers to Walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed.

The story follows the lives of three social outcasts. Stéphanie is 32, transsexual, a prostitute and tired of life. She finds incidental moments of happiness by going out or hanging around with her girlfriends. Stéphanie lives with Jamel (Terres froides, Les), an young North African who also occasionally works as a prostitute. When Stéphanie meets the Russian Michail, a deserter and illegal immigrant in France, she can't choose between the two men and a triangular relationship ensues.

The 3 characters are by society considered as outcasts, but the unlikely friends have found comfort and passion in each other. Lifshitz managed to create a mirror of life and hope, which is reflected through the beautiful performance of his actors.

The director provides a realistic picture of the life of his characters, without glorifying or glamorising the fringes of society. A movie for those who appreciate life, love and friendship.

8/10

Stéphanie is a transsexual prostitute who lives in Paris but she returns home to nurse her dying mother. Although her mother tries to understand, Stéphanie's situation is a lot to take in. Stéphanie has been living for some time now with two men and the three of them share a common bed and at times a common profession.

Jamel, is a young North African who has come to Paris and makes his living turning tricks in and around the train station. Stéphanie normally works the streets alone but one night her john wanted to watch her with another man. They spotted Mikhail on the street and took him back to Stéphanie's place for the show. He stayed after the trick left. Now he's part of Stéphanie's assembled family.

The film is much about the feelings of the characters and how they got to where they are and only little to do with the events happening in the present. If you are in the mood for likable characters in an interesting situation to be revealed to you with the speed of a flower unfolding then this may be the perfect movie for you. If however you are looking for a strong narrative story told in the conventional way then you should probably give this one a miss.

In Paris, the thirty-two years old travesty Stéphanie (Stéphanie Michelini) a.k.a. Pierre is a streetwalker that lives with the Egyptian gay hustler Djamel (Yasmine Belmadi) and the Russian gay Mikhail (Edouard Nikitine) that works in a restaurant. When the hospital where her mother Liliane (Josiane Stoléru) is terminal calls her, she travels with her two lovers to the countryside to look after her dying mother. While at home, she recalls her childhood and how she met Djamel and Mikhail.

"Wild Side" is an unconventional love story recommended for specific audiences. I am not fan of movies about homosexual relationships, but "Wild Side" is a good movie indeed, a sort of gay version of "Jules et Jim" regarding a woman divided by her two lovers. The performances are top notch and very realistic especially considering that this is the first work of Stéphanie Michelini and Edouard Nikitine. Unfortunately the characters are awfully developed and never explains why Pierre left her hometown when he was fifteen years old and why he became a travesty. Or why Mikhail left home in Russia. Or why Djamel has a relationship problem with his mother; further, the abrupt conclusion is disappointing and pointless. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Lado Selvagem" ("Wild Side")

'Wild Side' is a beautifully made film: with photography that captures a world both bleak and lovely, understated but human performances, an exquisite score, and an almost achingly painful sense of realism. What there isn't is a lot of plot in the conventional sense, as the film is almost entirely observational; and some of that observation is quite explicit (the central characters are a Parisian transvestite and his/her two lovers). But the film emphasises more what this unconventional threesome share with with the rest of us, without flinching on the detail of their life. Director Sebastien Liftshitz is clearly a major talent, and, while this is not exactly a fun movie, it reminded me of the work of Kieslowski in its sensitivity and composition.

Wild Side is an often moving, sometimes heartbreaking French film about a trio of friends centered around the life of pre-op transwoman Stéphanie. She is a sexworker in Paris (I think these scenes were filmed in the Bois de Boulogne, where a large contingent of mostly foreign-born transwomen sexworkers do their trade). She comes back into the life of her taciturn mother, a woman who lost a husband and a daughter and had previously decided to break contact with Stephanie after she transitioned. Now, as the only available caretaker, Stephanie is responsible for the mom, and brings her back to their rundown hometown in the North of France. Along the way, we meet Mikhail, a bi or possibly gay illegal Russian immigrant who is involved with Stephanie and Djamel, an Algerian male prostitute from the dumpy highrise projects north of Paris. How they all met is never really explained and not so important... the story is really about their various regrets and how they feel about this trio (not really a manage á trois since they aren't into group sex).

The spine of the film is the powerful performance and screen presence of Stephanie Michelini as Stephanie. While not a trained actress (this was her first acting job) she brings a quiet longing to the role and never has a false moment. She's female at the core of her soul, often very pretty framed by her beautiful ringlets of hair, even when the camera lingers on some of her face's hard edges. Matching her is Edouard Nikitine as Mikhail, giving a powerful, sad performance with dark, sometimes dead eyes. The two have a silent bathtub scene which is loving and erotic at the same time. Unfortunately, Djamel, the gay prostitute, doesn't add much to the mix. Yasmine Beimadi (a professional actor) gives him a bravado and almost Jimmy Cagney pugnaciousness. But why he's in this trio and what he brings to it doesn't seem altogether believable. Perhaps it was to bring out a conflict in Mikhail about being gay... as if his relationship with Stephanie is his last attempt to hang on to woman.

In my experience, such men never have relationships with transwomen and, as with all her customers, mostly very straight-identified men are into pre-op transwomen. I felt Sebastien Lifshitz (who is gay) tried to weld two very different stories together than don't altogether fit. As I watched Wild Side, I kept hoping for more about Stephanie and Mikhail and that a totally separate film had been made about Djamel. Another wonderful performance is given by Josiane Stoleru as Stephanie's sick mother. The scenes between mother and daughter are altogether tender and loving, even when laced with the mother's intense guilt and total disregard for Stephanie as a woman although she relishes her daughter's caretaking of her.

The cinematography in Wild Side (by Agnes Godard) is stunning and Lifshitz is wonderful at using low key sound and silence to add focus and give the film a elegiac tone. Special mention has to be made of one of the scenes opening sequences of roomful of transwomen being dolefully serenaded by genderqueer singer Antony Hegarty (who fronts his own band in NYC). The women in the room form a kind of chorus of trans beauty, pain, solidarity and regrets that is stunning. The song Hegarty sings is mourning the lose of a dead boy (in this care, perhaps, the 'boy' each of his audience members has lost as they transitioned?) It's a beautiful scene but, again, very much a gay man's take on what being a transwoman is. He focuses on the 'super femme gay male' aspects which is reinforced by the 'required' penis shot of Stephanies' body just before song scene.

Also, I found this film's quiet beauty also marred by having Stephanie be involved in sex work and the graphic scenes this entails (focusing on the hypocrisy of her straight clients). Unfortunately, even most gay men have a view of this as being what transwomen's lives are all about (even though Stephanie obviously wants to get out of it). As sensitive as Lifshitz is, he often stoops to an objectification of her that, while beautifully packaged and with a social/political undertone, sends much of the same message as many far more exploitive films.