Special Treatment

A very fertile conceit – the film both gradually brings together and rhymes the skills and experiences of two very different disenchanted individuals whose work might be seen as therapeutic (a psychoanalyst with a troubled marriage, and a high-class prostitute who specialises in role-playing) – is given real substance by Isabelle Huppert’s predictably superb turn as the call-girl considering calling it a day. Lent strong support by Bouli Lanners as the morose shrink, she wrings each and every subtle nuance out of a character that in other hands might have slipped into caricature – though whether (pace the LFF booklet’s claims) the film also serves as a commentary on Huppert’s own career is another matter entirely.