Like the previous reviewer I was a little disappointed. I have read about Sade (but not the work in question), as a result of reading the play 'Marat-Sade' and viewing the film (Peter Brook, 1973). For a film made in 2005, 'Eugenie' was very coy about the sex scenes. What else could the filmmakers do? Thankfully the sequences cut before descending into soft porn, and to go further would only have been porn. But is that what Sade's 'philosophy' reduces to? It does seem that the portrayal of Eugenie is a little ingenuous, but the film does its best to portray the view that desire is natural and the order imposed by church and state unnatural. I feel, however, that Sade was not simply making a point, but by his whole life and work was setting out to thumb his nose at society and instigate outrage. Where can a film adaptation in 2005 go with that theme in a world in which television teen comedies and sitcoms contain more outrageous (and more understated) comedies that satirise contemporary mores? I think Sade would have liked, for example 'Holy Smoke' (Jane Campion, 1999). Grimaldi has made the story into a period film, tastefully shot with limited settings. The problem is that the story in 2005 does not do what Sade was (apparently) trying to do in his time. But never mind, we can still refer to his work and decide what the film means for us now. Perhaps Eugenie's (unconvincingly acted) insight was not the recognition of, and abandonment to, 'desire' but the opportunity to rebel against the oppression of her mother? Freedom by coercion meets freedom by rebellion? These issues are 'unfinished cultural business' that still resonate today, and the film, although disappointing in many ways, provokes the viewer to respond to these issues in the viewer's own way, so I see some value in it.
Review of The Sentimental Education of Eugénie
