Wild Side
DIR Sebastien Lifshitz | France | 2004 | 94 min.
In French with English Subtitles.
SHOWTIMES:
Tue, Oct 4, 3:00pm, GR1
Sat, Oct 8, 9:30pm, GR7
Sun, Oct 9, 9:45pm, VCT
Reviewed by Gloria Wong
It took a while for me to figure out why this quiet character drama was called Wild Side. Granted, the central character is a transsexual prostitute who lives in Paris in a three-way relationship with two men. But, in the context of the story, it all seems pretty tame. Filled with scenes of tenderness, sweetness and intimacy, the film tellingly starts with Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons) bending his impossible delicate voice around “Fell in Love with a Dead Boy”.
Stephanie’s partners are Jamal, a North African from the Paris projects, and Mikhail, an illegal immigrant from Russia. When Stephanie’s mother becomes ill, Stephanie, Jamal and Mikhail all come to her rural family home to help out. In most films, this situation would be an opportunity for either farmhouse farce or emotional confrontations and we get neither, really. Instead, the situation conjures memories, leading Stephanie to think about her childhood, her older sister and father and her relationships with her partners. The film’s elliptical narrative gets a little tiring at times but individual scenes – like one in which Stephanie washes her mother’s hair with a jug and basin – linger in the mind like dreams.