Special Treatment

2010 | 95 minutes | Rated NR

Though Isabelle Huppert has played prostitutes throughout her career, she's always seemed too uptight to be completely believable as one, which poses a problem in this French comic drama (2010). Director Jeanne Labrune casts her as yet another icy-but-vulnerable character with a carnal side, in this case a high-end call girl who's considering psychoanalysis; the inevitable humiliation—an integral component of the Huppert formula—is staged at a mental hospital. The hooker's opposite number is a befuddled, well-meaning psychoanalyst (Bouli Lanners) who engages her professionally, and though the parallels drawn between therapy and prostitution grow tiresome, the duo's interaction is peppered with inspired comedic moments. Richard Debuisne, a key collaborator of Jean-Luc Godard during the 1980s, cowrote the screenplay and appears as a principled psychiatrist. In French with subtitles. By Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

Director: Jeanne Labrune
Producer: Jani Thiltges and Serge Zeitoun
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Bouli Lanners, Richard Debuisne, Valerie Dreville, Mathieu Carrière and Sabila Moussadek