Cinematheque: Premiere Showcase

Set in an upscale brothel in turn-of-the-century Paris, Bertrand Bonello’s smoky elegy for civilized prostitution defies categorization. The opium haze and fin de siècle languor carry undercurrents of Lynchian dread. Under a debt-addled madam, courtesans entertain dapper johns as the specter of STDs and life-threatening violence looms in the background. (35mm, 125min., in French with subtitles. With Noémie Lvovsky, Hafsia Herzi, Jasmine Trinca.)