DIRECTOR: Cécile Ducrocq
CAST: Laure Calamy, Nissim Renard, Béatrice Facquer, Romain Brau, Maxence Tual, Sam Louwyck, Diana Korudzhiyska, Amlan Larcher, Valentina Papic, Melissa Guers, Leonarda Guinzburg, Kim Humbrecht, Sarah Ouazana, Mahir Fekih-Slimane, Corneliu Dragomirescu, Ionut Mitrofan, Marie Schoenbock, Romain Gillot, Damien Zobir, Enzo Foïs, Yolande Besombes, Daniel Goscheschek
RUNNING TIME: 107 mins
CERTIFICATE: 18
BASICALLY…: A sex worker (Calamy) explores new avenues in order to provide for her son (Renard)…
NOW FOR THE REVIEW…
It really is quite the year for subversive dramas about sex workers, with Pleasure and Good Luck to You, Leo Grande already earning their fair share of praise for treating the profession as no different than, say, a busboy in a restaurant, and now French drama Her Way lends another perspective that once more discards the pre-conceived stigma surrounding it.
This one, though, is noticeably grittier than the glossed-up portrayals of those other films, with writer-director Cécile Ducrocq delivering a take that doesn’t shy away from some of the grubbier aspects of the job, and sometimes isn’t an easy watch because of it, but it remains an interesting and refreshingly candid look into this type of life, even if it’s nowhere near as successful as those more recent examples.
Her Way follows Marie (Laure Calamy, best known to international audiences for her role in French TV series Call My Agent!), a self-employed sex worker who sets her own prices with clients, and is comfortable enough with her role that she isn’t afraid to hide it when it matters, such as joining a union of fellow prostitutes campaigning for better regulations. However, the bulk of her problems lie with her teenage son Adrien (Nissim Renard), an aspiring chef who’s just been expelled from a state-funded school, and is in too deep with drugs and general teen laziness to do anything about it. When Marie learns of a prestigious culinary school that is rather easy to get into, but requires a hefty entrance fee, she becomes determined to raise the cash in any way she can – even if it means travelling all the way across the border to a seedy brothel in Germany, where some of the rough clients aren’t much better than some of her backstabbing associates.
The film is, first and foremost, a character study about this woman who’s perfectly comfortable with who she is – to a point where not only is her son aware of what she does, but she has no problem telling bank clerks where her main source of income comes from – but perhaps less so with the lengths to which she will go in order to fulfil her self-appointed mission. Ducrocq’s grounded directing style often achieves an uneasy tone that neither glamourises nor demonises the profession, but some areas of her writing do not quite strike the same levels of authenticity that a film like Pleasure struck so bluntly. Hers is the type of script that doesn’t seem to realise that its tackling of the seedier side of an unfairly frowned-upon industry is enough of a dramatic hook, and so adds some needless moments of morality-pushing tension that feel more like a fictional construct than anything which seems entirely realistic.
The balance never quite evens out, especially when there’s a constant disconnect from some of the characters we’re supposed to be following and rooting for. It should be noted, however, that Calamy herself delivers a bravura lead performance that is as confident as it is wholly compelling, and you do admire her character’s passion that drives her desperate mission throughout and makes her Marie an interesting three-dimensional protagonist. Her son Adrien, on the other hand, is an insufferable presence whose only dimension throughout most of the movie is to be as whiny, sullen, combative and verbally abusive to his hard-working mother and her friends as possible (wince in horror as this little shit angrily shouts transphobic insults to one of Marie’s fellow sex workers when all they’re doing is trying to help them prepare for a school interview). This character is so unappealing and detestable that you are almost rooting for Marie to fail in securing the cash for this school, only because it would mean he by extension wouldn’t get the thing that he does not deserve, and that she should save the money for stuff she needs rather than blowing it on this entitled toerag.
Whenever the film does focus solely on the intricate nature of the sex work industry, including how certain transactions are completed, and whenever characters are shown around new working environments, it succeeds in obtaining that realistic, gritty edge that it’s going for. Ironically, it is whenever it tries to crank up the drama that it starts to go a bit too far off course, leaving it to feel like a somewhat contrived take on a line of work that is still trying to free itself of the stigma that has long since accompanied it. Films like Pleasure and even Good Luck to You, Leo Grande are able to dive deeper into their respective topics without sacrificing much of their artistic integrity, and to a point neither does Her Way, but you still wish it had a tighter grip on its focus than it does.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Her Way is a grounded and gritty character study that attempts to explore the seedier side of sex work while still refusing to outright condemn it, but lacks the authenticity to fully succeed due to some overly contrived dramatic episodes, and some characters that you do not feel much sympathy for which makes it hard to fully engage with the story.
