WILD SIDE
Directed by: Sébastien Lifshitz.
Produced by: Gilles Sandoz.
Written by: Stéphane Bouquet.
Director of Photography: Agnès Godard.
Edited by: Stéphanie Mahet.
Music by: Jocelyn Pook.
Released by: Wellspring.
Language: French & Russian with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: France. 93 min. Not Rated.
With: Stéphanie Michelini, Edouard Nikitine, Yasmine Belmadi & Josiane Stoleru.

Like the Holly referred to in Lou Reed's, "Walk on the Wild Side," Stéphanie (Stéphanie Michelini) is a she who has become a he. But unlike Reed's insouciant anthem, director Sébastien Lifshitz's melancholy film is thoroughly downbeat. When one of Stéphanie's roommates/lovers answers a phone call for a Pierre, Stéphanie grabs the phone - that was her former name - and receives news her mother is dying. Returning to her sleepy rural hometown for the first time in 17 years, she is shortly joined by her lovers - sinewy aspiring boxer Mikhail (Edouard Nikitine) and 30-year-old North African Jamel (Yasmine Belmadi), who, like Stéphanie, hustles.

Wild Side holds interest due to its scrambled narrative, which doesn't clarify the relationships until the end. Intercut flashbacks reveal each character's past: Stéphanie's bucolic and happy childhood, Russian immigrant Mikhail's arrival into a squalid Parisian tenement, and Jamel's alienation from his family. When the film depicts the characters in action - Stéphanie streetwalking in a circus-like atmosphere with other transgender prostitutes, or Jamel tricking in bathrooms - the film explicitly comes alive. But scenes in which characters interact are often stiff and unmotivated static snippets. In a moment of tenuous bonding between Stéphanie and her mother, the two appear to be simply sitting on a couch and somberly reciting lines. When the mother matter-of-factly states, "I'm glad your father didn't live to see you like this," the impact is muted.

Overall, the portraits are sketches. The film explains why Stéphanie and her bisexual boyfriends need each other, but doesn't depict why they are drawn to each other, making the ménage à trois mechanical, largely due to Stéphanie Michelini's understated and sullen debut performance. Lifshitz effectively conveys her loneliness, thanks to the evocative score by Jocelyn Pook (The Merchant of Venice), but the audience will feel just as disconnected as Stéphanie. Kent Turner
May 10, 2005