SECRET THINGS
Directed & Written by: Jean-Claude Brisseau.
Produced by: Jean-François Geneix.
Director of Photography: Wilfred Sempé.
Edited by: María Luisa García.
Released by: First Run Features.
Country of Origin: France. 115 min. Not Rated (most likely NC-17).
With: Sabrina Seyvecou, Coralie Revel, Roger Mirmont & Fabrice Deville.

With its opening sequence of a beautiful nude woman on stage masturbating before a blasé audience, Secret Things is unmistakably French. One of the on-lookers is the timid bartender, Sandrine (Seyvecou, resembling Natalie Portman), who admires the dancer’s boldness and is later fired that night when she refuses to whore herself to a customer. The dancer, Nathalie (Revel), quits in solidarity, and takes the younger woman under her wing. Tired of living alone, Nathalie offers Sandrine a home. She becomes Svengali to Sandrine’s Tilby. Under Nathalie’s guidance, Sandrine is first dared to masturbate in front of her. In rapid time, Sandrine is walking down the streets of Paris in nothing more than a trench coat and removing her bra on a subway platform. With her newfound confidence, she takes part in Nathalie’s plan to climb the corporate ladder, one man at a time. Sandrine’s transformation into a femme fatale is always fascinating. Darkly comedic, Secret Things is in league with Barbara Stanwyck’s Baby Face (1933), in which a working class girl sleeps her way to the top.

However, both women meet their match in Christophe (Deville), their boss, who also defies the social order. Here, the film takes a turn so somber that it becomes camp. Christophe hasn’t feared anything since the age of nine and is so emotionally removed from others that not one but two young women have burned themselves in front of him. Like Don Giovanni, he is his own God. The film climaxes with a demonic orgy (think Eyes Wide Shut with full frontal nudity), where Sandrine is fed to sexually voracious men. With plenty of girl-on-girl action, this is the movie that photographer David Hamilton would love to make. Eventually, this melodrama loses its momentum, becoming ludicrously pedantic. With its characters serving as pawns in director Brisseau’s scheme, Secret Things is certainly a dangerous liaison, but without rich characterizations. Kent Turner
February 20, 2004