text: This story is about the romantic triangle between a nth. African male prostitute, a French transsexual prostitute (Stephanie) and a Russian waiter who speaks no French and never seems to shave.<br /><br />As a film it is dull, dreary and depressing, shot either on foggy, overcast winter days or in badly lit interiors, where everyone is bathed in a weird blue luminescence. And yes, I know, it's because the white balance was out. Everyone is pale and downcast and looks haggard, shabby and dirty. Bodies are bony and shot in such closeup that they look quite ugly and unappealing. Moles, greasy hair. Yuk. Bad news in a film where people spend a lot of time either naked or having sex.<br /><br />And the story? Well, Stephanie's mother is dying. All three characters go back to Stephanie's home village where, through a bunch of flashbacks to desolate countryside and predictably dingy interiors, we see a bit of Stephanie's childhood as a boy called Pierre. The mother dies. Well... and that's about it, really. Character development is kept to a minimum, as is the denouement of the story. <br /><br />I suppose the storyline is not linear (it would explain a lot of non sequiteurs) but really, after paying my seven euros I don't feel like having to construct the film myself: that's what the director takes my money for. To expect me to join the story telling process and get my hands dirty, so to speak, is asking way too much.<br /><br />This film is a heap of pretentious rubbish made, above all, from a desire to epater les bourgeois (ie shock the straights). I can see how it was a shoo-in for the Berlin Film Festival, and I can see why it got nowhere.