All the women, even the baby sitter, look the same. Why is this?
shareI don't know but was confusing to me as I thought Marco was getting it on with his sister early on. Later figured out the woman just looked like his sister.
He killed sixteen Czechoslovakians. Guy was an interior decorator.
#1
Laporte's (Michel Subor) "mistress" Raphaelle (Chiara Mastroianni) resembled Sandra, whose husband Jacques was Laporte's business partner, and she also strongly resembled Sandra's daughter Justine (Lola Créton); Justine naturally resembles her mother Sandra
We know that Laporte and Jacques operated a sex ring, and we know Laporte and Jaques sexually enslaved Jaques' own daughter, Justine, in that ring
Laporte's own lust for Justine was so strong he intentionally picked a mistress who strongly resembled Justine, everytime he had sex with Raphaelle he could pretend he was having sex with Justine
Justine's father Jaques raped her: he could pretend he was having sex with a much younger Sandra, a Sandra when she was Justine's age
Elysée (Florence Loiret Caille) was part of the sex ring and she too looked a bit like Justine, perhaps to satisfy Jaques' lust for his daughter, and the Babysitter (Elise Lhomeau) resembled Raphaelle, perhaps to whet Laporte's appetite, perhaps to signify the Babysitter was a future victim
Xavier (Gregoire Colin) also strongly resembled Justine and Raphaelle, Gregoire Colin appears in every Claire Denis film so either the resemblance was coincidental or Claire Denis intentionally cast females who strongly resembled Gregoire, which would be quite amusing and quite an experiment; Gregoire Colin in his younger years was identical-looking to Lola Créton, they could pass as father and daughter
"Xavier" the name first appeared as a toponymic surname for Catholic Saint Francis Xavier, perhaps Gregoire was intentionally cast in the role because he looked like Justine (Lola Créton) which forced a visual connection between Xavier and Justine in order to illustrate the contrast between "Saint" Xavier and Victim Justine-Who-Bared-Herself, Justice herself a victim to a "Saint"; the contrast between "Saintly" Xavier and Victim Justine also shines a light on taboo issues such as fathers raping their daughters and priests raping children, and on men creating a relationship with women in which the woman is completely dependant on the man and cannot escape without losing everything, including a child, just as wealthy countries "entrap" allegiance and obedience from struggling countries and proceed to exploit and rape and manipulate the struggling countries who have no choice but to obey or face collapse, just as the wealthy have always entrapped and exploited and raped the poor, wealth no longer a signifier of saintliness or righteousness or hard-working or morality
The financial adviser woman Marco met with to cash in his insurance looked a bit like Elysée, super-squeaky clean, mannequin model, but an independent woman
#2
All the women symbolically represent various stages and transformations in one woman's life: the virginal young uninitiated Babysitter to the sexually corrupted Justine to the bitterly compliant Elysée to the
comfortably numb Raphaelle to the defeated Sandra
#3
They look strongly alike because the men in their lives do not see a difference between any of them: they all look the same to men, the men do not differentiate between any of them
This is also a coy play on the "they all look alike" Cross-Race Effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-race_effect
Which subtly whips up the history of slavery and colonization, the film showing how this slavery and colonization have been used since time immoral by men to control their own wives and daughters and any other woman they want to control
#4
The only females the men "see" are females who all converge into a fantasy female they're searching for, which is why the females look alike and think alike and act alike with little variation, all the females heavily play into a singular fantasy-woman-idea, perfect mother (babysitter) and nubile (Justine) and sexually experienced/pornographic (Elysée) and obedient homemaker (Raphaelle) and business-minded (Sandra)