{"id":3012,"date":"2018-02-18T18:54:59","date_gmt":"2018-02-18T18:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commarts.pleather.us\/2018\/02\/18\/eva-review-not-even-isabelle-huppert-playing-an-irritated-prostitute-can-save-this-limp-melodrama-berlinale-2018\/"},"modified":"2018-02-18T18:54:59","modified_gmt":"2018-02-18T18:54:59","slug":"eva-review-not-even-isabelle-huppert-playing-an-irritated-prostitute-can-save-this-limp-melodrama-berlinale-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/2018\/02\/18\/eva-review-not-even-isabelle-huppert-playing-an-irritated-prostitute-can-save-this-limp-melodrama-berlinale-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Eva\u2019 Review: Not Even Isabelle Huppert Playing an Irritated Prostitute Can Save this Limp Melodrama \u2014\u00a0Berlinale 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was a minor kerfuffle during the Berlinale press conference for Beno\u00eet Jacquot\u2019s \u201cEva\u201d when a journalist asked star Isabelle Huppert<\/a> how she achieved such a degree of eroticism in the film without getting nude. \u201cYou have a very bizarre idea of eroticism,\u201d came the actress\u2019 withering second-degree burn of a reply.<\/p>\n

And, to Huppert\u2019s credit, it was<\/i> a ridiculous question. Ridiculous because French cinema has spent more than a century illustrating that T&A has precious little to do with screen sensuality, ridiculous because Huppert could make a Haneke<\/i> movie feel erotic, and ridiculous because Jacquot\u2019s overblown melodrama is a film about people who disguise themselves by how they dress.<\/p>\n

A limp, sudsy adaptation of James Hadley Chase\u2019s 1945 novel \u201cEve\u201d (a potboiler that Joseph Losey once spun into a Jeanne Moreau vehicle of the same name), \u201cEva\u201d begins with an engaging sequence that instantly sets the tone by subverting its own beauty. Sneering gigolo Bertrand Valade (Gaspard Ulliel<\/a>, the overbearingly chiseled star of Bertrand Bonello\u2019s \u201cSaint Laurent\u201d) arrives at the Paris apartment of an old gay writer, for whom he works as both an aide and an aspirational piece of ass.<\/p>\n

\ufeff<\/span><\/p>\n

The client is far too frail to take full advantage of his plaything \u2014 his body no longer seems capable of pleasure \u2014\u00a0but perhaps having such a beautiful young stud at his beck and call allows him to enjoy the faint aftertaste of desire. Alas, he asks for more than his heart can handle, and the mere sight of Bertrand removing his shirt causes the Booker Prize\u2013winning playwright to have a fatal coronary in the tub. The brief moment when Bertrand hesitates to call for help finds Jacquot at his best, his screenplay marvelously shading in all the small ways in which its protagonist is a soulless ghoul.<\/p>\n