Wild Side

Colour, 35 mm
France, Belgium, United Kingdom, 2003, 94 min
Section: Another View

Synopsis

Stéphanie is a 32-year-old transsexual prostitute. She feels the passage of time and often suffers from depression. She would love to call it all quits, but she manages to carry on and even from time to time experience moments of happiness with her friends, the majority of them also transsexuals. One night in a bar she meets Mikhail, a Russian immigrant without residency papers. Before coming to France Mikhail fought in Chechnya, but then he deserted. He lives from hand to mouth, taking the odd, badly paid jobs offered by the owners of the boarding house where he stays. Mikhail is quite interested in Stéphanie but she already lives with someone, a 30-year-old North African named Jamel, who has broken off relations with his family. Occasionally Jamel earns money on the sly as a prostitute. Stéphanie cannot decide between the two men. The three of them are faced with the problem of how to maintain their living, loving triangle. Wild Side won the Manfred Salzberger and Teddy Awards at the Berlin IFF 2004.

About the director

Sébastien Lifshitz (b. 1968, Paris) studied history of art in Paris from 1987 to 1993. During that time he worked as assistant cameraman to Suzanne Lafont, in addition to other jobs. In 1994 he shot his first short, Il faut que je l´aime. In 1996 he helped director Claire Denis on Nénette et Boni. Filmography: the medium-length Les corps ouverts (1998); a made-for-TV movie, Les terres froides (1999); a romantic story of coming out which earned him international acclaim, Come Undone (Presque rien, 2000 – screened at 40 festivals); The Crossing (La traversée, 2001) and Wild Side (2003).

The director on Wild Side: "I want the film to have a strong link with reality, a documentary dimension which is as hard and violent as the life of marginal characters can often be. The film will follow characters where they live - the streets of Paris - and will initially move forward at their speed: nervous, elliptical, rapid. In the second part of the film there is a change in tone. Life’s unexpected events take the three characters out of their territory and into the countryside of northern France. In the first part of the film, the characters guided the story, but from this point on, the story will guide them."