After picking up the terrible British Sex Comedy Not Tonight Darling I started looking round on Ebay for films that a friend would be keen in picking up.Catching my first glimpse of her recently in the exquisite Populaire,I was pleased to spot an "Erotic Drama" starring Déborah François,which led to me getting ready to find out what the "student services" are.

The plot:

Studying in university,Laura finds herself struggling to pay the student fees and cover all of her other bills.Looking for tips on how to pay the fees,Laura ends up stumbling on a prostitution website.Seeing the cash that men are willing to pay in order to meet women,Laura decides to dive in,and agrees to a meeting with Joe.Meeting Joe,Laura soon finds herself struggling with being happy with the cash,but deeply troubled by what she has to do in order to raise the fees.

View on the film:

Made as a TV movie,writer/director Emmanuelle Bercot and cinematographer Christophe Offenstein present the sex in a surprisingly bare manner,with Laura being shown fully naked,and her clients being left topless (although Bercot shy's away from going below the belt with the guys,despite being fine going there with the women!) Stylishly bringing Laura into the "adult business" world with quirky pop-up E-Mails and comedic " running meters" Bercot freezes the viewer in witnessing the pain that Laura suffers,as tough close-ups lock in on the anguish cast across Laura's face.

Adapting an infamous bio by "Laura D",the screenplay by Bercot attempts to thread a tough Drama with flirty Sexploitation nods.Whilst Bercot strips off the fragile state Laura is in as her relationships start to crumble,Bercot sadly fails to make the comedic edges sparkle,due to Bercot keeping a distance from Laura's lighter side,and also giving Laura no one good to react to,as all the men are shallowly drawn as total,2D scum. Displaying bravely in the deeply uncomfortable sex scenes, Déborah François gives a superb performance as Laura,thanks to François delicately balancing Laura's weaknesses with burning desire to complete her student services.

Deborah Francois I must say, is one of the sexiest girls to get her gear off. Her sexy and magical presence is worth the view alone. SS is an enjoyable film, for that fact, but we've been around this course, many a stories before (Slovenian Girl, 2010's Girls, or loosely the Aussie offbeat Sleeping Beauty- 2011). This is a tasty film which really works with, or relies on the scenes with uni hottie Laura, (Francois) making ends meat, by becoming a private escort and companion, through the internet, with a middle aged, enigmatic and menacing regular, Joe. The more demanding or weird he gets, the more dangerous aura we feel around the guy, where we fatally see a path for Laura that won't end well here. He pays her good, but they come with a price. He has some sick tastes, none more than an orgy scene with some dirty repulsive types, near the end, he sets up. At first Laura, thinks the service will just be a one off, but like a candy to a baby, she's get sucked into this business, which has us pondering, does she keep doing it, cause she enjoys it, or is purely for the money. The answer is both, she just doesn't want to admit she enjoys it. In short bits, we see her service other men, one a corpulent, background middle aged guy, where they share a slow moving dance, that scene kind of becomes humorous. One scene earlier in, has a client who picked her up at a bar, get dangerous. But really the film focuses on Laura and Joe's interludes. I mean does she like this guy, or seek a kind of friendship from him. The film doesn't really cut deeper than that, where honestly, I preferred a darker ending instead of the unsatisfying one I got here which really slumped. Seeing Francois in the raw, is one hell of a privilege, and she stokes up the screen. Here's another of these foreign flicks, with frank nudity, some of them dangerous, push bounds scenes, and if you're in the mood for a tasty dirty foreign flick, SS like 2004's Greek title, Hardcore will satisfy sexual hungry appetites.

Under the title "Student Services", I watched this film, not realizing it was a made-for-TV-movie based upon a true story.

The actress who portrays the main character, Laura, acquits herself fine. She plays a college student who has trouble paying her bills, so she turns to adult on-line ads to find meet men who will pay her for sexual favors.

The film is not erotic. Laura, for the most part, detests what she does.

The film may have been designed to put forth a political point of view--that too many students have financial problems, so they turn to illegal activities. Someone who lives in France might understand a political solution to this French problem, but others probably will not.

It is certainly no documentary. And it does not try to be.

As a drama, it offers little that is new to the genre, and Laura's path is marked by detours and confusing behavior, defusing the drama.