CLAIRE DOLAN's credits open like a thrilling experimental film. Over an anxious score (the soundtrack is stunningly pointed throughout), a montage of skyscrapers reveals itself, a beautiful study in geometry, symmetry, grids, angles. It's like looking at some futuristic colony, a metallic beehive, or the slots of some kind of museum, as in LA JETEE, an empty space exhibiting dead life. This shadowshow of surface, sheen, reflection, this perfect uniformity, is contrasted with the windows that dot these mirror walls, impermeable frames reflecting outside surfaces, distorting them, but revealing nothing inside.
It is possible to watch the unfolding 'human' drama in the same terms, in which all humanity is squeezed out in the expression of formal perfection. Rather like de Oliveira's LA LETTRE, each scene is meticulously framed, the left hand and its objects corresponding exactly to the right, the actors placed precisely in the middle. Sometimes there is no pretence at humanity, and the lines are literally on display, fetishised. The actual drama itself is rigidly formal, with plot points, correspondances, repetitions, characters, all following a pre-ordained, lifeless grid pattern.
All this is fascinating as it goes, but is it really enough to sustain a whole film? Although CLAIRE DOLAN is very American (especially Michael Mann) in look, its minimalist austerity, its unrealisitic shearing of all inessentials, owe much to French culture, the Melville-like grey/blue monochrome colours, the Bressonian story of a passive woman who is a literal slave to a brutally articulate pimp (the cat scene is hilarious), trapped in her chillingly airbrushed environment, prostituting herself to pay off a huge debt (for what? Surely not just her mother's medical fees?). She tries to escape, but her bind is inextricable. Even when she manages to pay off her debt, she has difficulty in finding a job, and we wonder if she'll be forced to return back to her imprisonment.
Another French influence is Camus' L'Etranger - both works open with the death of the protagonist's mother, like Meursault. Claire, a stranger to her own self, seems to have all emotion, responses, conventional ties sieved from her. But Meursault's passivity was a freedom that Claire does not have. Instead of the constantly glaring, blinding sun, Claire lives in a world of cold reflections. Claire's path, though, is perhaps more hopeful than Meursault's - the opening death does not lead to further death and self-destruction, but its opposite, life, hope, the future, and the angelic white that seeps the screen may not be ironic, although the film has taught us a lot of things about different kinds of families, so we may mistrust redemption.
Into this chill world comes Elton Garrett, whose slightly dim presence brings a lot of hard sexual truths to bear. He seems to genuinely love Claire, but is his paying her debt, looking out for her, another form of control? Whereas the sex scenes with her clients are ruthlessly, clinically exposed, bored, cliched, onanistic rites, there is a corporeal dialogue between Claire and Elton that suggests a kind of hope, although the minute he pays off her debt she dumps him.
But, even if feelings are never uttered or articulated in this film, there is some haunting need in Elton as seen in the enigmatic scene with the Hungarian - is he prostituting himself, or is he getting a sexual relief he doesn't get with Claire? The harrowing hold-up, where his masculine protecting policy is left utterly bereft, is a rare moment of heartbreak in a heartless (compliment!) film.
In the 1960s, Godard often used the figure of the prostitute as a metaphor for the citizen under Western capitalism, pimping and degrading ourselves for money of keep the repressive system going. We see a lot of nasty, violent, menacing, selfish, doubletalking men in this film, but there isn't quite enough here to construct a full-blown allegory about modern society, and the things we must do to survive in it.
More fascinating still, in a film of so little warmth, is the mystery of Claire's character, the contradictory hints about her Irish background, her relationship with Roland Cain (religious allusion?), her father, the way she is squeezed out of the narrative's second half, and the men take over, the minute Elton discovers her different identities in her medicine cabinet, and she doesn't seem to exist as a whole person anymore.
Kerrigan also reveals the prescience of directors like Sirk and Ray in using their techniques of framing - Claire's helplessness is shown in how she is framed, in mirrors, doorways, windows, corridors. In many brilliant shots, Claire is ironised in this manner - as she tries to see what's going on, what's threatening her, we can see, reflected in a window. We become party to that threat.
It is possible to watch the unfolding 'human' drama in the same terms, in which all humanity is squeezed out in the expression of formal perfection. Rather like de Oliveira's LA LETTRE, each scene is meticulously framed, the left hand and its objects corresponding exactly to the right, the actors placed precisely in the middle. Sometimes there is no pretence at humanity, and the lines are literally on display, fetishised. The actual drama itself is rigidly formal, with plot points, correspondances, repetitions, characters, all following a pre-ordained, lifeless grid pattern.
All this is fascinating as it goes, but is it really enough to sustain a whole film? Although CLAIRE DOLAN is very American (especially Michael Mann) in look, its minimalist austerity, its unrealisitic shearing of all inessentials, owe much to French culture, the Melville-like grey/blue monochrome colours, the Bressonian story of a passive woman who is a literal slave to a brutally articulate pimp (the cat scene is hilarious), trapped in her chillingly airbrushed environment, prostituting herself to pay off a huge debt (for what? Surely not just her mother's medical fees?). She tries to escape, but her bind is inextricable. Even when she manages to pay off her debt, she has difficulty in finding a job, and we wonder if she'll be forced to return back to her imprisonment.
Another French influence is Camus' L'Etranger - both works open with the death of the protagonist's mother, like Meursault. Claire, a stranger to her own self, seems to have all emotion, responses, conventional ties sieved from her. But Meursault's passivity was a freedom that Claire does not have. Instead of the constantly glaring, blinding sun, Claire lives in a world of cold reflections. Claire's path, though, is perhaps more hopeful than Meursault's - the opening death does not lead to further death and self-destruction, but its opposite, life, hope, the future, and the angelic white that seeps the screen may not be ironic, although the film has taught us a lot of things about different kinds of families, so we may mistrust redemption.
Into this chill world comes Elton Garrett, whose slightly dim presence brings a lot of hard sexual truths to bear. He seems to genuinely love Claire, but is his paying her debt, looking out for her, another form of control? Whereas the sex scenes with her clients are ruthlessly, clinically exposed, bored, cliched, onanistic rites, there is a corporeal dialogue between Claire and Elton that suggests a kind of hope, although the minute he pays off her debt she dumps him.
But, even if feelings are never uttered or articulated in this film, there is some haunting need in Elton as seen in the enigmatic scene with the Hungarian - is he prostituting himself, or is he getting a sexual relief he doesn't get with Claire? The harrowing hold-up, where his masculine protecting policy is left utterly bereft, is a rare moment of heartbreak in a heartless (compliment!) film.
In the 1960s, Godard often used the figure of the prostitute as a metaphor for the citizen under Western capitalism, pimping and degrading ourselves for money of keep the repressive system going. We see a lot of nasty, violent, menacing, selfish, doubletalking men in this film, but there isn't quite enough here to construct a full-blown allegory about modern society, and the things we must do to survive in it.
More fascinating still, in a film of so little warmth, is the mystery of Claire's character, the contradictory hints about her Irish background, her relationship with Roland Cain (religious allusion?), her father, the way she is squeezed out of the narrative's second half, and the men take over, the minute Elton discovers her different identities in her medicine cabinet, and she doesn't seem to exist as a whole person anymore.
Kerrigan also reveals the prescience of directors like Sirk and Ray in using their techniques of framing - Claire's helplessness is shown in how she is framed, in mirrors, doorways, windows, corridors. In many brilliant shots, Claire is ironised in this manner - as she tries to see what's going on, what's threatening her, we can see, reflected in a window. We become party to that threat.