Die gekaufte Frau

There's a moment early in the film when one of the more seasoned prostitutes of Club Happy House tells a new employee, "All men are bastards. Even the nice ones aren't nice," and everything that follows repeats the same theme without variation, striking a single note with sledgehammer finesse for nearly two hours. In between scenes of oppressed whores going about their business is an ongoing, unrelated episode showing a faceless (male) kidnapper brutalizing his helpless but noble (female) victim by chaining her to a rusted cot and taking Polaroid snapshots of her slow disintegration. Writer director Marleen Gorris certainly has a chip on her shoulder, but any criticism of her film (no matter how valid) by a member of the wrong sex runs the risk of looking like a typical knee-jerk over-reaction. Sure, and those viewers who champion the film will no doubt recommend it for its impartial wisdom and subtle artistry?

So frightening. As a prior reviewer noted, it has a documentary feel about it. It seems so real. I saw this film at the Chicago film festival in 1984 and have never seen it played anywhere again. I would like to see it again to see if it would have the same profound effect on me as it did that first time. If you see it playing, go to see it, if you are strong of heart. Will grab you.

From the plot summary, it's easy to believe that GEBROKEN SPIEGELS is just another '80s thriller that capitalizes upon voluptuous women with an allergy to every fabric known to mankind and the thrill of a faceless killer terrorizing his virginal victims. I think summarizing this film with its plot does it an extreme disservice. The film is indeed set in a brothel, and constantly shows these prostitutes at work, but I would argue that not a single scene is designed to be erotic. We never see the supposed masculine ideal of a house full of willing and scantily clad women who will take him to heaven for 200 guilders, but instead a house of hard, painful, even depressing work with its desperate workers doing what they know how to do to scrape by. This is not a film of entertainment, but of storytelling and art.

I write this not having particularly enjoyed the film's story. Although not wholly depressing, it's neither happy nor exciting, and as a male viewer with no interest in brothels, there was no character to which I related. Certainly there is no male figure of any moral value - as is mentioned in the film, the good men aren't good customers. Yet somehow, the film manages to surpass the need for relatability with its gentle and grounded portrayal of strong women who can handle the hard life they have chosen. No sympathy is demanded, rather, the film allows you the freedom to feel. In this way, the film transcends the cheap erotic trash that regrettably drowns it. This is cinema.

Critics have attempted to undermine the grim intensity of this film by claiming it adopts a "separatist" position: the only sympathetic male character is an old derelict who poses no threat to the women. One could reply that it is equally plausible that the emphasis is intended as a corrective to many films which do not inquire into the gendered nature of violence. Instead, there is a tendency to focus on the "criminal genius" locked in mental combat with heroic authority figures. "Gebroken Spiegels" differs by drawing together the almost ritualised degradation experienced by the main characters who work in a brothel, and the repetitive atrocities of a serial killer. Irrespective of differences in individual circumstance, victims are shown to have been selected for a shared defining feature. The stark realism of the film has an almost documentary feel to it, and should stimulate debate on (feminist) resources of hope in diminished circumstances: one recalls how, in "A Hand Maid's Tale", (female) sociologists and other thinkers preferred to work as exotic entertainers for an elite who liked savouring the decadent pleasures forbidden to the "masses". Critical thought would be more tolerated in these circumstances than outside, if only as a kind of forbidden "exotic fruit". "GS" offers a different, although related context, which could also be usefully compared to "Female Perversions" and Lizzie Borden's revolutionary "Born in Flames."