Part
documentary, part drama, part infomercial, part how-to-guide, Whore is
titillation without consummation, a teaser of a film that will probably not
satisfy any potential audience. Viewers looking for an insightful look
into the world of prostitution will find the interviews with real-life pros to
be shallow, uninformative, and overly glamorized. Others looking for
some cheap thrills will also find the scant nudity, lack of sex, and long
stretches of frustrated inaction to be too much to take.
One might even argue, although it is a
bit of a stretch, that Whore is an attempt to legitimize a profession
that is generally seen as unsavory, and combined with the lack of actual
sexual acts, will get people interested enough to try a prostitute after the
film. I might suggest this approach would seem very unlikely, as most
viewers will do something that those that find their release will do -- roll
over and go to sleep, most likely long before it is actually over.
Somewhere in the middle of this
cavalcade of snippets with prostitutes, gigolos, johns, madams, pimps, and
porn actresses is a bland and uneventful drama involving Denise Richards (The
Third Wheel, Undercover Brother),
playing a 24-year-old virgin (yeah right!), introduced to the world of sex for
profit by her neighbor, a prostitute played by Daryl Hannah (Kill
Bill, The Big Empty). Richards isn't
keen on the idea until she needs some fast and easy money, which is generally
the allure that draws most women into the profession. These scenes are
superfluous to the overall story, and despite having two actresses that have
bared all in films before, almost completely chaste. Even a scene of Richards
and Hannah in bed together leads to...talking.
The interviews are a bit more
stylishly presented, but annoyingly so. Interviewees weave in and out of
conversations, some of them spliced together to make it seem like they are all
listening to what one another are saying, and sometimes agreeing and
conversing with one another, although it becomes obvious early on that this is
done through selective editing rather than a truthful communal reality.
Prostitutes laugh, cry, and nod at what someone else is saying, although they
never hear it or see it, leading to a false context of omniscience.
perhaps the most troubling part of
Whore is that it tells us very little that we didn't know already.
We know prostitution is a profession all over the world, performed by women
and men that see it as strictly business. We know what draws them to the
life, and we know the basics of how their business operates. Why in the
world we need a bunch of talking heads to tell us everything that we have
already seen and heard before about one of the most often portrayed
professions in literature, television and the movies is beyond anyone's
comprehension. interviews with real-life prostitutes are all over the
place as well, from HBO series to daytime talk shows, many of them much more
well-rounded and full of informative tidbits than this.
Perhaps the best summation of Whore
can be extracted from the statements of certain prostitutes interviewed within
the movie, where they mention that they don't give their customers everything
they want, which generally helps gain repeat business. This movie skimps
so far that it delivers on almost nothing that it promises, not even worthy of
a one-time trick. I'm sure that those same prostitutes will tell you
that that's a recipe for going out of business. If you're smart, you'll
never pay the fee.
Qwipster's rating:
©2005 Vince Leo
