This dark Belgian comedy was actually set in London and the Home Counties. A child is dying and his only hope is a new treatment only available in Australia. The parents cannot afford the costs of getting to Australia, so the father's widowed mother, brilliantly played by Marianne Faithful, much stouter than she used to be, looks for a job. She ends up in a sex club where she is promised the sort of money required. At first she finds her functions highly distasteful, but practising "disassociation" she soon becomes exceedingly good at it. Unwilling to lose her, the club owner loans her the rest of the money. However, when her son follows her and finds out what he thinks she is up to, he is disgusted and refuses to take it. The wife is more pragmatic: this is the only way they can save their son. She brings her husband round and the head off to Australia. Meanwhile the widow, who has developed a fellow feeling for the club owner (both are outcasts), returns to the club.
At first I thought it would be an unpleasant film, but it was played with a light touch and well acted. Whether or not the widow's functions are replicated in real life, I would not know and they cannot be described: I suspect they were simply a storyline device. However, there was much humour in the scenes. There was much play between staid village life where everyone knows what everyone else does, and the widow's increasingly less furtive commutes into town. At a tea party for the local bridge club, she is pressed on what she does, and when she explains the looks of blank astonishment were very cleverly portrayed.
At first I thought it would be an unpleasant film, but it was played with a light touch and well acted. Whether or not the widow's functions are replicated in real life, I would not know and they cannot be described: I suspect they were simply a storyline device. However, there was much humour in the scenes. There was much play between staid village life where everyone knows what everyone else does, and the widow's increasingly less furtive commutes into town. At a tea party for the local bridge club, she is pressed on what she does, and when she explains the looks of blank astonishment were very cleverly portrayed.