Black & White & Sex

I didn't expect much when I first started watching it but then I couldn't stop. Why? It was so real true and ... intellectual. You'd never expect this truth to be spoken out. It needed an actress to do it. A high spec one.

... I don't condone this activity (avoiding spoiler) but the psychology of it should be understood. Very skilled work of a director and a crew. Photography is a marvellous piece of art.

Not for everyone but for mature thoughtful person may be a broadening perspective exercise.

At the end I highly recommend this movie as it was something surprisingly good and thought provoking.

What is wrong with Australian cinema-goers? This is an amazing example of our talented industry: The script, the cinematography and the actresses all blew me away. The director has made a bold statement regarding censorship, about what we can see and hear and why that is. After watching this movie last night, I'm still thinking about it the next morning, and will continue to do so for many days - now that is a sign of a good film. If you've missed it at the movies, wait until it's on DVD and buy it. We need to support our struggling film industry. We need to get behind talented directors and actresses like these, and we need to make more intellectual movies like these.

Just watched this multi-layered indie mockumentary called Black & White & Sex. Beautifully shot in monochrome using multiple cameras with several women posing as 'Angie', a sex worker. The supposed interview talks about sex as a commodity but within parameters of morality, submission, power-play and erotism. Then it opens up into classy film noir laced with wicked humor. Unconventionally fresh as a film consciously narrated within a film, this is topnotch crotch talk and a rare Aussie gem crafted with style and a bit of acquired taste.

Amongst the eight actresses who play Angie, I can't think of anyone who stands out because they are all brilliant, each carrying the discussion forward until it reaches a climax (pun unintended). The discussion itself is written and filmed as a documentary where the premise is about prostitution and all its highs and lows as a profession. We don't see the director and I suspect this was intentional. More so because the director (or the unseen) also represents us, the audience, with all our perceptions about prostitution and its moral implications (or lack of). The best part of the film is not what happens in the end, but the power-play between Angie and the director. Metaphorically, it's something like sex, where each partner takes turns in dominating the other, until both reach a 'happing ending'. The reason why this film is shot in black and white is just astounding and another metaphor that reveals itself once we arrive at the inner most layer of the discussion.

Black & White & Sex is highly recommended as a brilliant film that not only tries to eliminate the taboo behind prostitution, but reiterates why it is sometimes a necessary evil. It's all about perception and what sex means to anyone watching this film, be it consummated, consensual or means to self-gratification. Best served with oysters!

For most of the movie I was totally into it. That is till the moment I realized the interviews were not real (but a scripted one, its a film-not a documentary; silly me). It felt like a bucket of cold water being poured over my head. But till the realization dawned, it came across as a pretty overwhelming series of talks with the sex-workers, too bad it was not real. If the interviews were not make-believe, it would have been quite a piece of work. Since I watched this without any prior information about the project, I watched through 90% of the movie believing it to be a documentary & I was deeply moved by it. That is until the last segment where the script suddenly stops making sense, and all the built up quickly evaporates. Hence the 5 of 10 rating.

In this delightfully smug feature, a documentary filmmaker implausibly allows himself to be bullied for two hours by an interviewee whose approach to the questions being asked is, "%#$@ you." While none of the observations offered rise beyond the banal, her attitude of world-weary wisdom with a side of condescension appears to be designed exclusively to allow any viewer who might relate to her to feel good about it. Apart from empowering those audience members with a chance to look with scorn on everyone else in the room, the film accomplishes little. The interviewer, cunningly devised to be the ideal shallowly moralistic and unthinking opponent for his subject, never manages to ask a question one might not find in a pamphlet. There is little in the way of insight from the film's parade of angry performers, many of whom seem thrilled to have a chance to make use of acting skills they're usually only allowed to employ in angst-ridden productions at theatres downstairs from the local coffee shop.

Oh, also it's elegantly filmed in a striking black and white, and the lead is played by a succession of disparate actresses. As someone once nearly said: ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for content.