While discussing his provocative new feature Wild Side, French filmmaker Sébastien Lifshitz (Come Undone [2000]) recently stated that "I’m drawn to impenetrable characters that operate outside the usual norms. I truly love fringe dwellers and people who don’t fit with fiction’s archetypes." The three main characters in his latest -- Stéphanie (Stéphanie Michelini), a transsexual prostitute; Jamel (Yasmine Belmadi), a bisexual Arab hustler; and Mikhail (Edouard Nikitine), Stephanie’s lover who happens to be an illegal Russian immigrant -- certainly do fit the bill. Early on, Stéphanie is seen living the hard life in Paris with her two men. But the situation changes when she is called by her dying mother to come attend to her. As Stéphanie makes her way towards her rural childhood home, old memories involving her deceased father and sister come flooding in. At this point, Lifshitz, working with the great cinematographer Agnès Godard (most famous for her work with Claire Denis), starts to contrast the dingy realism of his early sequences with poetic, picturesque shots of the French countryside featuring a rollicking young Stéphanie (who was once Pierre). While this allows the director’s artistic sensibilities to thrive, the connection between Stéphanie's past and present remains oblique at best. Ultimately, both Jamel and Mikhail, who were practically lost without the woman, make their way to her for support. Those two also remain "impenetrable" for the most part (the way Lifshitz perhaps wanted them to be) -- they are often seen brooding silently to Jocelyn Pook’s evocative score (a whiff of Patrice Chéreau is hard to miss). What Wild Side establishes quite well, however, are the dynamics of the relationship between the trio. It is also a rare film that refuses to make its characters’ sexuality the main focus. That’s not to say that the film shies away from it (a slow pan of Stephanie’s body is bound to make Catherine Breillat envious), but rather the confrontations are presented in a very practical manner. Liftsitz’s characters may not need others but they do need one another, and that’s the only way they will survive. Wild Side is a film made by and for adults.

Grade: B
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*The film premiered at the Berlin film festival in 2004 (it won a couple of awards there). It was released in the U.S. in June last year by Wellspring, who've now put it out on DVD.