“ELLES” Starring Juliette Binoche Opens Friday, May 18 at the Angelika Dallas

ELLES will open at the Angelika Film Center – Dallas on May 18.

Official Selection – Berlin Film Festival 2012: Panorama, Opening Night Film
Official Selection – Toronto Film Festival 2011

“Female sexuality, in all its complexity, is placed under a microscope, turning Elles into a must-see film from a director whose talent has finally flourished in full bloom.” Piers Handling, Toronto Film Festival

May 8, 2012, DALLAS – Kino Lorber presents the U.S. theatrical premiere of ELLES, starring Juliette Binoche in perhaps her most daring screen performance to date. Directed by up-and-coming Polish filmmaker Malgoska Szumowska (Happy Man, 33 Scenes From Life), ELLES tells the story of Anne, played with fearless vulnerability by Binoche, a sophisticated Parisian socialite and mother of two who works as an investigative journalist for Elle Magazine. As Anne uncovers the world of student prostitution for her latest assignment, she develops intimate friendships with her subjects, Alicja, played by the luminous Polish starlet Joanna Kulig, and Charlotte, played by the striking French actress Anaïs Demoustier (Time of the Wolf). The two young women finance their university studies – and their escape from poverty – by moonlighting as sex workers to bourgeois married men. When Anne begins to gain a deeper understanding of her subjects’ precarious liaisons and their motivations on both sides, she falls into a thrilling and fearsome rabbit hole of self-inquiry about her most sacred convictions regarding money, sex, family and her own identity. Szumowska probes the dark and controversial sexual recesses of contemporary society, alternating scenes of deviance with the charming, naturalistic flow of Binoche’s grounding and complex portrayal of a modern matriarch, marking her as a significant new directorial voice.

ELLES 2011, France/Poland/Germany, 90 min. French & Polish with English subtitles. Directed by Malgoska Szumowska. Written by Tine Byrckel and Malgoska Szumowska. Producer: Marianne Slot. Executive Producer: Olivier Guerbois. Director of Photography: Michal Englert. Costume design: Katarzyna Lewinska. Assistant Director: Nicolas Cambois. Editors: Françoise Tourmen, Jacek Drosio. With: Juliette Binoche, Anais Demoustier, Joanna Kulig, Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, Krystyna Janda, Andrzej Chyra, Ali Marhyar, Jean-Marie Binoche, Francois Civil, Pablo Beugnet. A Kino Lorber release.