Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Cécile Ducrocq
Starring: Laure Calamy, Nissim Renard, Romain Brau, Sam Louwyck, Béatrice Facquer
I’m not sure who first said it, but there’s an axiom which states a
meaningful existence is comprised of two external factors: a job which
you enjoy, and an appurtenant social group. One wonders how the glib
simplicity of the homily squares with Marie’s, the central character in
Cécile Ducrocq’s - writing duties shared with
Stéphane Demoustier and Jacques Akchoti - superb
Her Way, daily. A sex worker in Strasbourg, with a delinquent teen son, this
single mother has a professional life which is at best unreliable and
fatally prone to fluctuating market forces, while her kid (Adrien -
Nissim Renard) is a rebel without a clue. Adrien has aspirations
to become a chef, but his restless attitude has seen him expelled from
several colleges - miraculously, an offer comes in from a Cordon Bleu
style school to take him. Problem is that the training doesn’t come
cheap: can Marie (Laure Calamy, ace performer and ace Stockard
Channing lookalike) raise the funds to give her son the opportunity to
realise his dream, and, implicitly, achieve her own personal redemption?
With Marie approaching a prohibitive forty, and the French authorities
squeezing the breaks for sex work, it’s going to be tough. Don’t hate
the player, hate the game. Marie has no choice but to play it her way.
With Marie and Adrien’s vocations involving, respectively, extra marital
sex and cooking, between them they’ve got the
national interests
of France covered. And Marie is really good at her job, too. Not just
the sex, but the administration, the ‘bedside manner’: she keeps a
journal wherein she jots down details of her clients - ‘premature
ejaculation... married’ - to best tailor their experience. And they say
people don’t want to work! Which makes it especially poignant when, like
an athlete at a certain point, the natural span of Marie’s career is
coming to an end. This is an inevitability further catalysed by the
influx of underground sex workers: desperate immigrants who will go
cheaper than Marie and her established ilk.
The representation of sex work in Her Way is both
multi-faceted and fascinating. From Marie’s Brexity response to her
economical competition (‘they’re stealing our johns’!), to the hypocrisy
of the government’s punitive regulations (at an organised protest the
women chant, ‘You sleep with us, you vote against us!’), in her
depiction of the business, Ducrocq is level-headed, non-judgemental and
interested in the occupational minutia. Later, as Marie works unfamiliar
territory to increase funds, there is an incident of rough sex: a staple
trope of this sort of narrative, usually utilised as a third act
obstacle but which is presented here simply as an unpleasant but
unavoidable feature of the job. Furthermore, in its portrayal of sex
itself, Ducrocq manages to make it seem fun and attractive (as it would
for the client), but also rote and flat at the same time (all in all,
this is Marie’s job) - quite a feat (SPOILER
- a plot aspect which irks is that a final act conflict does occur when
Adrien suddenly discovers his mum is a brass. Seeing as she’s been seen
interviewed by TV cameras articulating her issues with legislation, and
how he has hitherto never seemed to question Marie’s odd working hours,
the revelation feels unrealistic and too plot convenient. Maybe the
development disappointed me because until then I just assumed that her
son was refreshingly accepting of Marie’s honest graft).
As the film continues, and the window of opportunity for Adrien’s
application gets tighter, Her Way eschews the perhaps
expected dynamic of Marie subjecting herself to further degradation to
make pay. The humiliation is of a different kind, as Marie has to keep
up with younger and hungrier workers, and sacrifice her independence for
the governance of a brothel. Can anyone blame Marie for a late-plot noir
temptation of a happened-upon wodge of cash? After the careful and
pointed development of character which the story builds (Calamy and
Renard are both great), the film’s swerve into thriller territory is
heightened. The tight and compulsive plotting of
Her Way is riveting, as are its shifting moralities and
deep humanity.
Her Way is on UK/ROI VOD now.
