Observation: Bonello continues to justify his importance in contemporary French cinema with his latest, and perhaps greatest, film. In this quick observation I would like to comment on the use of split-screen that Bonello implements sparsely in the film; utilized 3 times showing actions that we can assume are happening simultaneously. The effect works merely as a continuation of the elliptical and parallel editing/narrative structure. Events are doubled and cross-cut with each other in this world where time exists as a cloud of opium smoke or is barely present at all (the Moody Blues dancing ensemble and the final cut of the film being the most jarring examples of this timelessness). Mirroring this structure early with the split-screen effect Bonello explicitly displays the circular environment the prostitutes will never escape (once again, reiterated with the finale).
Bonello on the ending, "
I shot that with my own camera, it's not even HD-it's regular old DV. I usually use it for casting videos and rehearsals. Today we are very used to these images, this trashy video. And I didn't change the shitty sound from the camera. It's a way of saying time has changed; it's not good or bad, it's just the reality of right now... A hundred years later, she's still a whore."
(Excerpted from Cinema Scope, Summer 2011 Issue 47)
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