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Whore

2004, Movie, R, 87 mins

Whore: Review

WHORE | LIFE, THE | YO PUTA
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Is there anything remotely new left to be said about the world's oldest profession? Perhaps, but Spanish director Maria Lidon's (aka "Luna") glossy film, which sets sleekly staged interviews with European prostitutes within a fictional story, never finds the words. Adapted from the European best-seller Yo Puta: Hablan las Prostitutas by Isabel Pisano (who also cowrote the screenplay), the film is structured around an unseen author trying to line up a series of interviews with sex workers for her new book, "Whore." Unbeknownst to the writer, her neighbor, struggling actress Adriana (Darryl Hannah), has been turning tricks to pay the rent, and is about to introduce her virginal friend, Rebecca (Denise Richards), a 24-four-year-old graduate student in anthropology whose grant money is rapidly diminishing, into the life. Luna cuts back and forth between this silly conceit and routine interviews with "whores." They range from "luxury prostitutes" who service high-paying clients to dominatrices who dish out pain to those who find pleasure in sadomasochism. Stylishly shot in a series of color-saturated bars, sex clubs and hotel rooms, or against surprisingly seedy, blue-screen backgrounds, the sex workers and a few of their clients answer a series of questions about the who, why and wherefore of the business. Why do men visit prostitutes? What do johns think of the women they pay for sex? What do prostitutes think about the men who pay them? (That they're not good for much aside from income seems to be the prevailing opinion). Where do you see yourself in 20 years? Aside from a brief section near the end when Luna touches on the growing problem of sexual slavery in former communist countries (moments which seem all the more disingenuous considering the slick, Maxim-style visuals that precede them), nothing about her treatment of this tired old subject seems particularly novel. The interviews suggest HBO's naughty documentary series Real Sex, while the wraparound story has more in common with a Zalman King Showtime fantasy than any serious piece of sociological filmmaking. (In English and Spanish, with English subtitles.) leave a comment --Ken Fox
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