This week’s borderland is Josianne Belasko’s provocative story on male whoring. In an anonymous Paris, sisters Judith and Irene run a commercial TV – the one that in the US would sell the snuggle. The male whore, or gigolo if we want, is Marco aka Patrick. Judith is the “cliente” which is the title of the film in France. The twist is social and sexual: Judith is a commitment phobic hence she thinks that by buying sex she doesn’t get attached. She is a middle-aged divorcee whose ex husband married someone twenty years younger with whom he had a child. The usual story. Marco lives at the outskirt of Paris, in a racially mixed harmonious community. He is married to Fanny and they are too poor to have their own house so they like with Fanny’s mother and sister.
Belasko represents women who like sex without the complexity of emotional involvement. The sexual trade happens in a dignifying way where both Judith and Marco are a happy customer and supplier. Belasko breaks with some misconceptions on female sexuality and the desire of domesticating the male. Another broken taboo in the film is the presence of the female pimp. Initially Fanny is hurt and disgusted by Marco’s whoring career. Later though when poverty torments them with mortgages, bills, and no future perspective, Fanny changes her mind. She pushes Marco to go back to his “escort” career so that they can have a decent life. This is indeed the social twist of the film.
Eventually Fanny and Marco realize that they can’t handle the fracture of another woman/cliente between them. They intended to transcend attachments but struggled to separate sex from emotions. Eventually Fanny surrenders and jealousy overcomes financial needs. In this Belasko presents us a more realistic, perhaps stereotypical, woman who is unwilling to share her husband.
Josiane Belasko pushes us with excellent humor to transcend our gendered conceptions of sexual trade. She then brings us back to psychodrama of heterosexual love.
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