THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – TO SEE
Liberated, stripped… One day, Aurore (Louise Chevillotte) pushes the door of a striptease cabaret and asks to give it a try. She discovers there women who create their acts and deploy an unexpected power in front of the public, essentially composed of men. The reserved young woman, a former student who was unable to finish her thesis, takes pleasure in transforming herself, in enhancing her daily life under the spotlight, while learning the risks of the job – the clumsy client in the cabin, etc. Surrounded by her good fairies, Mia (Zita Hanrot) and Elody (Laure Giappiconi), Aurore feels like she is steering her boat for the first time in her life.
In the landscape of French cinema, which now rarely shows the female body for the sake of not using actresses as objects, My only desire, by Lucie Borleteau, certainly clashes. Five years after #metoo, history will remember that it is a director and actress in her forties who seizes on the a priori enticing subject of stripping, and manages to film in their simplest device some of the most prominent actresses of the new generation.
Let’s add a word on the film poster – a young woman, from the back (Louise Chevillotte), is about to slide her underpants over her hips – which is reminiscent of the advertising campaign “Tomorrow, I take off the bottom”, which made so much noise in 1981. After having exposed their charms to sell soaps and automobiles on 4 × 3 posters, or having stripped naked on the big screen to spice up the poor scenario of a comedy at the dad, can women still play with their bodies while remaining subjects? Mathieu Amalric had brilliantly answered in the affirmative by filming a burlesque troupe all in feathers and pasties in Tourin competition at Cannes in 2010.
Lucie Borleteau in turn questions the concept of “liberated woman”, awakening annoying feminist questions: undressing under the male gaze, is it degrading, alienating, or can the exercise be fun and emancipatory? It is almost in the form of a tale that the director of the short film Belly Strike (2012) and Fidelio, Alice’s Odyssey (2014) introduces us to the world of striptease: Elody acts as a narrator, inviting the viewer to discover Aurore’s story, as if to open their eyes and revise their ready-made judgments. Note that the actress and director Laure Giappiconi is the author of the book And first the look (Anne Carrière, 2021), in the footsteps of an actress leading the investigation in the strip world, with a view to creating a show.
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