House of Tolerance

Nothing in this film comes as a surprise, but Bonello's intent to show the place backstage as well as onstage is fulfilled and pertinent, even though the period setting gives the picture a curio air.

It's about forcing us to think about people we never would otherwise and seeing their struggles and humanity.

What gives the film its haunting pull, as well as its feminist undercurrent, is the filmmaker's palpable compassion for these women.

No one, male or female, has any fun, but the men behave as if they do. They are all half-stupefied by the languor in which they drown.

It emphasizes setting over character and plot; and it casts a mood that's both eerie and entrancing.

We watch with various degrees of either fascination or boredom as the girls go about their work wondering how long it or they will last.

Bonello resists crystallizing his subjects by neither romanticizing nor condemning them, preferring instead to consider their time between work, the textures they inhabit, the joys and humiliations they endure, and, above all, their layers of humanity.

Audacious. [Full review in Spanish]

At once repellant and enthralling,exotic and familiar, but never anything short of fascinating.

Yet there is something else here, mysterious, practically intangible within the confines both of the brothel and the genre, something that leaves the film a lingering quality like smoke left hanging in a vacated room, traces, ghosts, remnants.