Did you people see the same film I saw?

Am I Missing Something?

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

This movie was recommended by Netflix for gay people. The opening scene with a female pleasing herself was at first a put off (partially because I'm a gay male) but I decided to give the movie a little bit of time to develop. I am very glad I did. Even as a gay man i found the sexual tension palpable, and clearly not for any gratuitous reasons. This movie found the perfect balance of what was shown and what was not. Many men whom believe in a innate weakness of women would not like to watch this movie, it will make you feel uncomfortable. Forget gender bias and watch this great movie with a open mind it truly is a cinematic pleasure.Thanks, Matthew

The French do lyricism and erotica well, maybe it's the accents or the actors; more likely, the language itself. Mind you, had this been Demi Moore and Julia Roberts frolicking about, I'd have laughed myself silly; as it is, the two female leads - especially Sabrina Seyvecou - successfully show how powerful a currency sex appeal is. It begins as a feminist fable - the two girls thrown together at a strip club, consorting, exhibiting and daring one another to ever greater public displays of pleasurable posturing between hands and genitals -supposedly, in the belief that, with training, Sandrine can get an office job and sleep her way to the top.Now, had this been tongue in cheek - and I'm not saying whose tongue, in whose cheek - had M Jean-Claude Brisseau, the director, used a lighter or defter touch, the sensual side would have melted our Haagen-Dazs and there could still have been a thought-provoking moral aspect, reflecting the power of, well, the femme fatale.As it is, the film gets lost towards the end, implying that the playboy office boss is the real manipulator and the girls are mere pawns. The joyous, impish scenes when the two women dare one another to surreptitiously remove their underwear whilst seated in the subway, are long forgotten. Thankfully, Sabrina Seyvecou's natural charms are sufficient to blot out any significant disappointment. She could conquer my office any time.I think the Haagen-Dazs has left a stain. At least, I think it's the Haagen-Dazs...

Now we know why Godard and Truffaut made such crud movies. They began as critics on Cahiers du Cinema and that magazine rated THIS piece of cheese one of the Best 10 films of 2002. It is to laugh. Let me pitch a story to you. Two young girls in Paris, passable looking but nothing to write home about. One strips and openly masturbates for customers at a strip club, the other tends bar there. When one refuses to put out after the show the owner fires them both. The bartender moves in with the stripper, who encourages her to shed her inhibitions. Then a light bulb ignites over the stripper's head. 'Why don't we sleep our way to the top'. This is SO original. I shudder to think how far Nell Gywnne or Lola Montez might have gone if they'd have come up with an idea like this. Thing is, that's IT. End of story. Okay, there are always going to be youngsters who have never seen a naked girl masturbating but in the 21st century they are going to be few and far between. If you like sub-Catherine Breillat then run, don't walk to the box office. Otherwise check out Matrix #9.

You gotta love the French. They may not know how to get rid of megalomaniac dictators (Hitler, Hussein), and few people outside the borders of La Republique would invest their hard-earned cash in a French automobile. But when it comes to sex-tinged business scandals, like the ELF `whore of the republic' saga, the French make the boys at Enron seem like virginal choirboys. And, oh yes, the French do know how to make a `thinking man's' erotic movie, as `Choses Secretes' (in French, with English subtitles) proves. And their wine and cheese isn't half bad, either.For those in the mood for a thoroughly adult (i.e. aimed at mature audiences) film, that probes the dark side of human behavior and features plenty of beautiful women behaving naughtily, `Choses Secretes' does not disappoint. In the film, two young women, one already experienced in using her body for fun and profit, find quality jobs hard to come by in present-day Paris, so they decide to try the time-honored method of sexually manipulating men in order to rise to the top (at one point in the film, one of the minor characters mentions Madonna, who is accused of having done exactly this in the music business). This requires them to put their human feelings of love, friendship, kindness, loyalty, and decency on hold, which ends up being a huge struggle for them. However, one person in the film, the CEO of the company they go to work for, who is due to inherit the firm from his aging father, apparently has mastered the emotional distance required to be a truly manipulative, evil powermonger (`Choses Secretes' was filmed in 2002, and the revelations that came out in 2003 about Saddam Hussein's sons are chillingly close to this character). So, `Choses Secretes' does have a significant story to tell.The film is well cast, and the three leads all give strong performances. From the moment we meet the two female leads, it is obvious from the looks in their faces that one of them is the more experienced, who will slowly lead the other into debauchery. The scenes by which the two women learn to use and enjoy their bodies are amusing, as are the portrayals of life in a Parisian office. The final third of the movie, however, is appropriately dark and sinister, and there is a sub-theme of incest that may bother some viewers (I had to remind myself that, after all, it is only a movie). Prudes, however, will have exited the theatre long before this sub-theme is reached. But those in the mood for an adult French cinematic experience containing both eye candy and food for thought won't be disappointed.