Review of Special Treatment (2010) by Veronique K — 27 Jul 2011

It's one of those european movies that specialize in making a seemingly provocative story into a mediocre sleeper which lacks any climax. (pardon, i'm mundane, and I need dramatizations to spice it up).

A self-claimed 43 year-old high-class prostitute who is an expert in role-playing sex-games meets a jaded therapist who encounters a series of depressions in his life. then the man books a series of services from this woman, but he cannot decide what he really wants, what position, what kind of scenario within their sexual dallidances, or even whether he really wants to get laid or not! bascially half of the movie is spent on how the therapist doesn't wish to get laid while the woman considers to get herself another kind of profession. in a brief, they both are tired of putting themselves away to comply the needs of others. and there's no romance, no affair but several ordinary conversations about their impasse of life. does that suggest that people of extraordinary professions are actually quite ordinary by private?

Audience follows those trivial daily details of their lives, then all of a sudden, the movie ends just like that. so the man gets his wife back, and the woman finds a job as an art-collector. the camera lingers over her face while she takes a sip of her coffee (so "interesting"?!) this movie is designed to fail your expectation, pre-programmed to be anti-climaxical! the only amusing eposide is the part isabelle huppert dresses as a 14-year-old school girl to please her client who has troubles with erection. that episode does have a dry sense of humor. the rest of movie is quite a bore!

I do wanna say, even this movie is quite a piece of tedium, (you would definitely not be entertained for it!), at least, it is honest and real. totally the opposite to the stories of chuck palahniuk, whose characters have no ounce of realism in them. "special treatment" is glued heavily to the real conditions of human frailty without dramatization or exaggerations by giving it some excessively oddball story-developments. that's one thing I must say no matter how un-entertained I have been!

Who says I want realism?! I want magic! (blanchet from streetcar named desire).