Set in a Paris brothel, a “house of tolerance”, at the end of the Belle Époque in 1900. Fine gentlemen and dandies lounge in the drawing room in the girls’ bored embrace, before choosing one to go upstairs with.
In this closed world, where some men fall in love and others become unaccountably vicious, the girls share their secrets, fears, joys and pains.
House of Tolerance immerses us in this long-abandoned world, awash with opium and champagne. The film’s pace accentuates the languor of the place, its many personages slowly revealing their life journeys. Several of the stories are grim: country girls desperate for money, dumped from failed relationships and occasionally targeted with violence for no reason.
And yet there is grace, especially in the daytime moments of sisterly camaraderie and the casual yet oddly affectionate deceits of the madam (a stern turn from the formidable Noémie Lvovsky).