If we discount the dirty mac brigade who are likely to buy the DVD on the strength of the picture on the box the selling points for the rest of us are the names Cedric Kahn - who latest film, Feux Rouges, was definitely out of the right bottle - and Charles Berling, who is reliable rather than brilliant with some solid credits behind him. Berling's growing sexual obsession with Sophie Guilleman is believable because in real life I would imagine that more men, middle aged or otherwise, develop obsessions with ordinary girls/women than with the Pamela Anderson/Jordan in-yer-face sex objects. This is not to say that Guilleman is chopped liver but she is an Average girl; average looks, average figure, average sexuality and again it is, I suspect, much easier to develop a sexual obsession about a girl who is much more likely to be available to the Average man, which is what Berling is both on and off screen. The idea of a young girl believed to have killed a man three times her age via sex clearly invests her with a certain cachet not least in the eyes of a philosophy teacher drifting aimlessly yet inexorably towards mid-life crisis and not even searching for a paddle. The concept of a young girl who actually enjoys sex for its own sake and is unwilling and/or incapable of adding love to the mix, a creature in effect prepared and eager to experience sexual fulfillment as often and with as many different partners as possible and remain loyal to none is not exactly new and each time this story is told the only possible interest lies in the man who is unable to share her and how long it takes to reach its inevitable tragic conclusion. This one is as good as any but better than few.
Review of Boredom
