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In "The Pornographer", a veteran director of some 40 pornographic films, Jacques Laurent (L茅aud), comes out of professional retirement in an attempt to settle some debts. As an artist, however, he feels increasingly out-of-step with the commercial demands of the industry, and on set one of his producers takes over the directorial reins for a crucial sex scene.
Meanwhile, his teenage son Joseph (R茅nier), who disowned his father on learning of his profession, gets back in touch, causing the washed-up Jacques to ponder even more the meaning of his own life...
The second feature of French-Canadian director Bertrand Bonello, "The Pornographer" is a cool, thoughtful character study, in which pornography can be read as a metaphor for the practice of film-making.
Unfolding in three parts, it's a work in which the characters are weighed down by the spectre of the protests of May 1968. Back then, making pornography was for Jacques a political act, a form of resistance to the dominant order - in the interim, the sense of humanity in his pictures has been eradicated by commercial impulses. And Joseph and his friends attempt their own brand of student activism, by adopting the 'new radical language' of silence as the 'ultimate protest'.
The sad-eyed Jean-Pierre L茅aud, himself a New Wave icon from the 60s thanks to his work with Godard and Truffaut, adds to this unhurried film's melancholic air. Throughout the story, we see glimpses of "The Animal", the hardcore erotic masterpiece his character yearned to make. By the end, increasingly isolated from society, it seems that Jacques' magnum opus will remain a pipe dream.
To its credit, "The Pornographer" takes its subject matter seriously. The repercussion of this, however, is that one 12-second pornographic sequence was cut by the BBFC. Hence the protest card you'll see at the beginning of the movie from distributor Metro Tartan.
In French with English subtitles.
