A businessman leaves his country home, and wife and young son for a business trip to Paris. While there he develops a sexual and spiritual bond with a call girl.
Acting
Kristel's devastating stillness — she says everything with her eyes.
Direction
Borowczyk's obsessive attention to objects and texture.
Cinematography
Paris as liminal space — hotels, mirrors, thresholds.
Director
Walerian Borowczyk
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Released between Emmanuelle films, this was Kristel's attempt at serious dramatic legitimacy — French critics initially dismissed it as more exploitation, but it's gained reappraisal as Borowczyk's most humanistic work.
Borowczyk originally wanted to call it 'The Margin' referencing both profit margins and marginal existence — the hotel room as literal and metaphorical liminal space where class and gender negotiations play out.
FR
