School of Flesh

Taeko, the owner of a Tokyo atelier, is a successful, self-assured, well-off woman. She is thirty-nine years old, has a divorce behind her, fashionistas line up to see her, and she meets with friends once a month to exchange stories about current adventures, including romantic ones — not dizzying, but interesting. Taeko moves in high society — dull, vain, hypocritical, but familiar. And one fine day, she falls head over heels in love with a twenty-year-old bartender, a cynical handsome man with no money in his pockets but with ambitions, and her well-ordered life goes awry...
Yukio Mishima (1925–1970) is a star of 20th-century literature, the most read Japanese author in the world, possessing extraordinary talent, known for his works of the broadest range and diversity of genres (novels, plays, stories, essays), as well as a stunning biography (an obsession with bodybuilding, far-right political views, harakiri after a failed attempt at a monarchist coup). Mishima is a fine psychologist, and his "School of Flesh," a novel about a strong woman ensnared in a strong passion, brilliantly adapted by Benoît Jacquot with Isabelle Huppert in the lead role, is a vivid proof of this. It is a story about how female friendship is stronger than any male vows, love is indistinguishable from the struggle for power, and the question is only who will manage to maintain themselves and emerge victorious in the end.