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House of Tolerance (L'Apollonide, sourvenirs de la maison close): Cannes Review

5:45 AM PDT 5/16/2011 by Deborah Young

The lives of Paris brothel workers are anything but sexy in Bertrand Bonello's period piece.

CANNES -- Both an elegiac salute to the demise of Paris’s fin-de-siècle brothels and a poetic critique of the white slave trade, Bertrand Bonello’s House of Tolerance fascinates with its exquisite period atmosphere and repulses in its cruel spectacle of young women trapped in a life from which there is practically no exit. Despite plentiful nudity, there is very little a contemporary viewer will find sexy here, though the title alone should elicit strong initial commerce from art house regulars and beyond.

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