L’école de la chair

Jacquot’s 1998 adaptation of the little-known Yukio Mishima novel, about the passion of the middle-aged Dominique (Isabelle Huppert) for the beautiful young Quentin (Vincent Martinez), took a critical pummeling in France – the reasons why are difficult to fathom. The film is avowedly, and unashamedly, a star vehicle for Huppert (if you don’t respond to her and her quietly aggressive self-assertion, you won’t respond to the film), not unlike a late 1940s Joan Crawford vehicle like Preminger’s Daisy Kenyon. While it may not be the most ambitious of Jacquot’s late works and its version of Paris may be a little on the anachronistic side, it’s impossible to dismiss the emotional and visual precision of the filmmaking, or the virtual melding of minds between Jacquot and his star. ‘An elegant account of mad love and cool vengeance… the movie is shot from Dominique’s perspective – or, rather, from Jacquot’s own fascination with her point of view’, according to critic Jim Hoberman. (KJ)