Friday, March 30, 2012

Whore

Yo, puta; drama/ documentary, Spain/ USA, 2004; D: María Lidón, S: Joaquim de Almeida, María Jiménez, Denise Richards, Daryl Hannah

A reporter is collecting a series of interviews with prostitutes, mostly from Spain, in order to publish them in her book. At the same time, a young L.A. student, Rebecca, has troubles paying her rent, so her neighbor Adriana persuades her to try to earn some money as a prostitute.

Maria Lidon's patchwork, a blend of fiction and documentary, can be slightly better understood with this in mind: it is a visualization of Isabel Pisano's book "Yo, puta", a collection of interviews with prostitutes, alas the actresses playing prostitutes who look directly into the camera and talk about their profession are fake, but they are just re-enacting thoughts and observations of real people who participated in those interviews. As such, there are some interesting moments in such a collage - especially since the authors tried to include a wide variety of opinions - from a prostitute who says that every woman from her profession falls secretly in love with at least one client up to another who insists that she could never fall in love with a client because she finds them all repulsing. Unfortunately, instead of simply allowing every prostitute to tell her story from start to finish, "Whore" jumps from one woman to another, allowing for only 30 seconds of their monologues before cutting to next episode, whereas the hermetic narrative was even worsened by including some unnecessary mumbo-jumbo special effects. Likewise, the storyline wondered away into porn industry towards the end, which has little to nothing to do with the set-up theme, while the interviews were interrupted by a small, 10 minutes long episode involving Denise Richards and Daryl Hannah, which is so lax that its purpose was only to add a few minutes of marketable stars to attract the audience.

Grade:+

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