Synopsis
 

Alice, a prostitute in her forties got tired of her job and seeks a therapist to change her life. Xavier, a well-established psychologist, gets more and more annoyed by his clients’ monologues. When his wife leaves him, he meets Alice.

Program Note
 

Alice, a luxury-prostitute plans her client’s desires of mise-en-scene with her ‘professionalism’. She dresses up in a botched school uniforms or into a perfect housewife dresses for sadomasochistic performances. Xavier is a psychoanalyst with tight schedules for counseling his patients. These two people, burned with their occupations, start looking for an exit from their fatigue lives and desires for each other’s occupations instead.
 Special Treatment allows the crossing of two different worlds and shows the capitalistic circumstances of targeting mental domains of one’s mind, time, talent, body and other matters for sales and pointedly exposes the modern people’s difficulties of finding the way out from the capitalistic rituals. Isabelle Huppert, who plays Alice, presents us with an exquisite, detailed and overwhelming performance that carries a delicate and yet powerful emotional qualities. (KWON Eun-sun)