Mark Reviews Movies: ALICE (2020)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 14, 2020

Writer/director Josephine Mackerras' debut feature is a series of engaging and/or entertaining beats, building toward an anticlimactic and not-quite-fulfilling third act. Mackerras makes her intentions and her points clear, as an abandoned wife and single mother learns how to take control of her life by working for the escort service that her caddish husband used for most of their marriage. While it's mostly about how this character evolves, Alice is also about societal double standards, especially when it comes to sex and infidelity, and how such prejudicial expectations are far harsher on women than they are on men.

It's a simple, straightforward idea, so maybe Mackerras doesn't need to explore or dramatize it any further than is done here. The absence of any real third-act conflict or drama based on the idea, though, feels like a missed opportunity.

The film we do get, though, is still worthwhile, because Mackerras finds the drama, the unexpected humor, and the sometimes startling compassion within her scenario. It also helps that Emilie Piponnier's performance, as the eponymous woman who sells her body but discovers an unrealized freedom in the process, is a marvel of charm, emotion, and development.

Piponnier plays Alice Ferrand, a loyal, adoring wife to François (Martin Swabey) and a caring, attentive mother to the couple's young son. Everything seems relatively normal. They have nice, well-kept apartment in Paris. François goes off to work, while Alice takes care of the child. The two meet some friends for dinner, and sitting at the table, François recites some poetry and lays a long, passionate kiss on his wife. A couple of the other women at the table observe with not-too-secret envy. What more could a married couple want?

The turn arrives quickly and without warning. Alice goes shopping and discovers that both of her credit cards have been shut down. She calls François repeatedly, and he doesn't answer his phone. As a last resort, Alice heads to the bank, where she learns that, indeed, her credit cards are now invalid.

The couple's bank accounts are empty, because François has been spending all of their funds. Worse, they are more than year behind in payment on the mortgage, and the foreclosure process is about to begin. A little more investigation uncovers that François has been spending the family's money on high-end escorts, who can charge a thousand Euros or two for maybe an hour's worth of empty pleasure.

Mackerras' screenplay puts Alice and, by extension, Piponnier through the wringer in the first act, as confusion turns to shock, to anger, to despair, and to an almost serene realization of the absurdity of Alice's newfound status as a betrayed wife, a single mother, and a financially destitute woman. No one's going to help her. François won't answer Alice's calls. The bank wants its money or the apartment. Even Alice's mother blames her daughter for whatever François—"a good husband and father," in the mother's view—might have been missing from the marriage.

The basic premise is that Alice, trying to learn more about how much money her husband might have spent, ends up attending a group job interview for the escort service. She gets the job, and with the bank preparing to take the roof from over her and her son's heads, Alice decides to take the gig.

A more melodramatic and judgmental movie might see this decision as the moral tragedy of a fine, innocent woman falling from grace. Mackerras, though, seems intent on wholly subverting that notion. There's the casting of Piponnier, whose soft features and wide eyes would make her the perfect embodiment of cherubic virtue, but once Alice makes that decision, the film disarms us of our assumptions based on this story and the star's physical presence. The encounter with Alice's first client isn't played for moral revulsion or even erotic titillation. Mackerras plays it as a lengthy gag of clumsiness (The money goes flying and falling to the floor when the exchange is attempted) and awkwardness (Alice tries to talk with a condom concealed in her mouth for when it'll be necessary).

Other encounters follow, and each one completely downplays the eroticism (If she's good at her job, a fellow escort offers, Alice won't have to deal with sex but for a minute or so) or shatters whatever expectations we think we have about how a scene will play (A client later in the film seems nice, then curt, and then potentially threatening, but the end result is watching a wounded man bear his soul for some unknowable but deeply rooted reason). Alice does excel at the job, starts making enough money to pay off her husband's debt, and realizes that she's more capable of providing for herself and her son than her marriage suggested.

Inevitably, François returns, but again, Mackerras doesn't use that as a means of easy conflict (well, until later, when it's presented and then too-easily dismissed). The husband isn't a barrier to Alice's new freedom. He becomes another way to show just how much Alice has changed—taking charge, telling François what to do, setting up boundaries, calling out his terrible behavior, never giving him the idea that his pleas for a happy reunion will ever be answered.

Alice is funny and thoughtful in ways we don't anticipate, because Mackerras' goals have nothing to do with simple moral answers or melodramatic turns. The film may not examine the double standards of society, but its methods certainly challenge them.

Note: Monument Releasing is partnering with independent theaters for a virtual release of Alice. Half of net proceeds from rentals will go directly to the theater of your choosing (e.g., the Music Box Theatre in Chicago). Instructions for renting the film and how to choose your local theater are available here.

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