No One Wants to Marry a Whore: On Bonello's House of Tolerance (2011)

Does the aestheticization of aestheticization render it obscene? House of Tolerance (2011) revels in the sumptuousness of its subject matter while simultaneously oppressively illustrating its subjects. A brothel buckling at the turn of the century, careful tableaus of beautiful women delicately draped over velvet sofas, carressing panting black panthers, ornate wallpaper as a backdrop for hair unpinning and corsets unfastening. There are no naked bodies intertwined or passionate embraces, always separated by cloth, the brothel and all the women in it are protected by emotional distance. The women that fail to adhere to that emotional distance succumb to disease or addiction, in short, they're punished. Eventually they are all out of a job, the implication that they will most likely die in a ditch somewhere. It is all very tragic and unfolds very methodically (or so it intends). Except, it is possibly Bonello's most stylistically uneven film, a blip of slow motion here, an overwrought crescendo there. A problem for a director I associate with having a firm grasp on a rather leveled style. What is most bothersome is the objectifying of objectification. Although primarily about commerce and capital rather than sex, Tolerance is swept up in a manicured portrayal of exploitation to the point that, just maybe, it becomes exploitative. So much of the general portrayal of sex work in media is focused on the emotional brutality of it all. Self invention and constant adaptation, speaking when spoken to, listening otherwise, absorbing another for monetary reward and ignoring what they take from you each time in turn. But lives and people are so much more than what they do and where they do it. For a film that illustrates the moments in-between just as much as the acts themselves, it rarely shows the women for who they are, always reducing them to their environment in one way or another. They are constantly burdened by the brothel and find little escapes with each other, but are positioned again and again as nonexistent outside of this place (they are not allowed to leave without accompaniment of a gentleman or the madame, otherwise it is solicitation). If society says so, why does the film need to reaffirm the point to an audience that is already a part of said society? Bonello wants to have his elegant Victorian layer cake and eat it too, but engaging in the veneer of beautification and brutalization of women without succumbing to it in depiction is nearly impossible. Rather than address it, Bonello wafts back and forth between beauty and agony without the careful consideration his eye seems to be attuned to. As time doubles back on itself, days and nights indistinguishable from previous days and nights, there's a collapsing of the entity of the brothel. The women are mostly unchanged, despite being "worn down" by their work and debts or punished for their hope, nevertheless they are dragged down with it. House of Tolerance left me awful empty, or perhaps not totally, a small pit sitting at the bottom of my stomach. I see these women and I wonder what they would name a pet if they had one, what book they are reading, if they can whistle. I want to know them and I want this film to show me who they are. Instead, it can only reveal their sorrow and abuse. Is this only felt by a whore herself? How can one discount their own lives while watching lives unfold on screen? They can not. So, I am allowing myself to be displeased with this film, perhaps in a reactionary way. I can see myself coming back to it, finding it anew, and discovering more not noticed when blinded by personal bias on subject. For now, not even a day at the lakeside seems to vindicate these women as more than "whores" in Bonello's beautiful, nasty world of muted, occasionally violent debauchery.