Originally due this week, Music Box Films has pushed back the Blu-ray release of Maison Close: Season Two to October. Sumptuous, stylized and finely crafted, the series offers a dark exploration of desire and power, re-imagining age-old themes through the world's oldest profession. Lauded by the New York Times as an example of a new wave of French television, Maison Close: Season Two streets on October 20th.
Synopsis: Maison Close continues to be featured in Music Box's slate of cinema-quality foreign television acquisitions, which also includes the distributor's last three International Emmy Award-Winners for Best TV Movie/Miniseries or Series - Generation War in 2014, The Returned in 2013 and Millennium in 2011. Other critically acclaimed releases include Sweden's Wallander and Kiyoshi Kurosawa's mini-series Penance.
Set in Paris in 1871, right after the suppression of la Commune, a workers' revolutionary movement that briefly took power, Maison Close follows a cast of gorgeous women trapped by circumstances beyond their control in the luxury brothel 'Paradise'. Considered a first class "closed house" reserved for aristocratic or bourgeois clientele and noted for strange and refined practices during a time when prostitution was legalized, Paradise is populated by a fascinating cast of characters, each of whom struggles to find escape and solace in their own way. Hortense (Valérie Karsenti), is the manipulative and, in turn, manipulated mistress of the Paradise who runs her business with iron hand; Véra (Anne Charrier), the star of the bordello, is a beautiful courtesan in her thirties whose career is nearing its end; and, Rose (Jemima West, Mortal Bones: The City of Instruments), the heroine, is a country ingénue raised by nuns who goes to the Paradise searching for her mother, only to be blackmailed into becoming a prostitute.
In Season Two, the hit French costume drama opens in 1873. The brothel, 'Le Paradis', now collectively managed by its prostitutes, enjoys a period of commercial success once again. However the Paris vice squad wants to put an end to that revived utopia and pushes for a return to public morality. Hortense, Rose and Véra must ally themselves with a young and flamboyant Parisian gangster who takes the opportunity to establish his quarters in the brothel.
Unfolding like a serialized 19th century French naturalist novel, this uncompromising series, produced by Jacques Ouaniche at Noe Productions International for Canal Plus-, is the perfect mix of style and substance, a richly compelling period drama with unmistakably modern sensibilities. HBO was so impressed with the show that they're developing an English-language remake.
The Blu-ray release of Maison Close: Season Two is presented in 1080p with DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround. Special features have yet to be revealed.