''House of Tolerance'' (french: L'Apollonide: Souvenirs de la maison close, also known as ''House of Pleasures'') is 2011 French

drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...

film written and directed by

Bertrand Bonello Bertrand Bonello (; born 11 September 1968) is a French film director, screenwriter, producer and composer. His background is in classical music, and he lives between Paris and Montreal. His work has also been associated with the New French Extre ...

, starring

Hafsia Herzi Hafsia Herzi (born 25 January 1987) is a French actress and film director. She is best known for her debut role in the award-winning Franco-Tunisian feature '' The Secret of the Grain'' for which she won the award for most promising actress at the ...

Céline Sallette Céline Sallette (born 25 April 1980) is a French actress. Career In 2012, she was nominated for the César Award for Most Promising Actress for her performance in ''House of Tolerance''. In 2016, she was a member of the jury for the Un Certain ...

Jasmine Trinca Jasmine Trinca (; born 24 April 1981) is an Italian people, Italian actress. Trinca was born in Rome, Italy. She began her career in 2001, chosen by Nanni Moretti for his award-winning ''The Son's Room'', receiving the Guglielmo Biraghi prize a ...

Adèle Haenel Adèle Haenel (; born 11 February 1989) is a French actress. She is the recipient of several accolades, including two César Awards from seven nominations and one Lumières Award from two nominations. Haenel began her career as a child actres ...

, Alice Barnole, Iliana Zabeth and

Noémie Lvovsky Noémie Lvovsky (; born 14 December 1964) is a French film director, screenwriter, and actress. Life and career Born in Paris in 1964, Lvovsky is the daughter of Jewish parents who emigrated from Ukraine to flee pogroms. She studied cinema at L ...

. The film had its world premiere in the Competition section of the

Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...

on 16 May 2011.

Plot

The story is set in a luxurious Parisian brothel (a ''maison close'', like ''

Le Chabanais Le Chabanais was one of the best known and most luxurious brothels in Paris, operating near the Louvre at 12 rue Chabanais from 1878 until 1946, when brothels were outlawed in France. It was founded by the Irish-born Madame Kelly, who was close ...

'') in the early 20th century and follows the closeted life of a group of prostitutes: their rivalries, hopes, fears, pleasures and pains.

Cast

Production

The genesis of the project was a merge of two film ideas

had been thinking of. About ten years earlier he had tried to make a film about modern brothels, but the project had been cancelled. After finishing ''

On War ''Vom Kriege'' () is a book on war and military strategy by Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), written mostly after the Napoleonic wars, between 1816 and 1830, and published posthumously by his wife Marie von Brühl in 1832. I ...

'' (2008), Bonello decided that he wanted his next film to be about dynamics within a group of women, and his partner suggested a film about prostitutes in a historical setting. The director then became interested in the aspect of a brothel as a closed world from the viewpoint of the prostitutes. The idea of a scar in the form of a smile came from the film ''

The Man Who Laughs ''The Man Who Laughs'' (also published under the title ''By Order of the King'' from its subtitle in French) is a novel by Victor Hugo, originally published in April 1869 under the French title ''L'Homme qui rit''. It takes place in England beg ...

'' (1928), an adaptation of

Victor Hugo Victor-Marie Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romantic writer and politician. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote in a variety of genres and forms. He is considered to be one of the great ...

's novel with the same name. Bonello says he dreamed about the film two nights in a row while he was writing ''House of Tolerance'', and decided to include a female character with such a scar. The film was a co-production between Les Films du Lendemain and the director's company My New Picture, in collaboration with Arte France Cinéma. The production received 540,000 euro from the

Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentricity ...

(CNC) and 416,000 euro from the

Île-de-France , timezone1 = CET , utc_offset1 = +01:00 , timezone1_DST = CEST , utc_offset1_DST = +02:00 , blank_name_sec1 = Gross regional product , blank_info_sec1 = Ranked 1st , bla ...

region, as well as pre-sales investment from

Canal+ Canal+ (Canal Plus, , meaning 'Channel Plus'; sometimes abbreviated C+ or Canal) is a French premium television channel launched in 1984. It is 100% owned by the Groupe Canal+, which in turn is owned by Vivendi. The channel broadcasts several ki ...

and CinéCinéma. The total budget was 3.8 million euro. Casting took almost nine months. Bonello wanted a mixed ensemble of both professionals and amateurs who above all worked well together as a group. Filming started in

Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse (, literally ''Saint-Rémy near Chevreuse'') is a commune in the Yvelines department, in the Île-de-France region of north-central France. Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse station is the southwestern endpoint of the RER B ...

on 31 May 2010 and lasted eight weeks. The film was recorded on one continuous set, which allowed the camera to move between each room without cuts. Bonello chose to focus the camera on the girls and almost never their clients. He explained: "it reinforces the impression that the prostitute is above the client. I told the actresses: 'Be careful, I want twelve intelligent girls.' It was really important for me: they're not being fooled, they are strong women."

Release

The film had its world premiere at the

2011 Cannes Film Festival The 64th Cannes Film Festival was held from 11 to 22 May 2011. American actor Robert De Niro served as the president of the jury for the main competition and French filmmaker Michel Gondry headed the jury for the short film competition. South Ko ...

in the Competition section on 16 May 2011. It was the fourth time a film by Bonello was screened at the festival, and the second time in the main competition, following ''

Tiresia ''Tiresia'' is a 2003 French film directed by Bertrand Bonello and written by Bonello and Luca Fazzi. Based on the legend of Tiresias, it tells of a Trans woman, transgender woman who is kidnapped by a man and left to die in the woods. She is the ...

'' (2003). It was released in France by Haut et Court on 21 September 2011.

Reception

Critical reception

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film has an approval rating of 83% based on 29 reviews, and an average rating of 7.2/10. On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which assigns a normalized rating, the film has a score 75 out of 100, based on 9 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Phil Coldiron of ''

Slant Magazine ''Slant Magazine'' is an American online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York ...

'' gave the film 4 out of 4 stars, writing, "Not many films have ever approached the possibilities afforded by the slippery subjectivity of cinematic time so directly, or with such intelligence."

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...

gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, describing it as "a morose elegy to the decline of a luxurious Parisian bordello, circa 1900, a closed world in which prostitutes and their clients glide like sleepwalkers through the motions of sex."

Accolades

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:House Of Tolerance 2011 films 2011 drama films 2010s French-language films 2010s historical drama films Arte France Cinéma films Films about prostitution in Paris Films directed by Bertrand Bonello Films set in 1899 Films set in 1900 Films shot in France French historical drama films Films with screenplays by Bertrand Bonello 2010s French films