Prostitute

1980
1h 37min

NOTE IMDb

MA NOTE

Ajouter une intrigue dans votre langueA Birmingham prostitute leaves friends and family behind to seek her fortune in London. Back home, a sympathetic social worker and a solicitor form a support group to campaign for a change i... Tout lireA Birmingham prostitute leaves friends and family behind to seek her fortune in London. Back home, a sympathetic social worker and a solicitor form a support group to campaign for a change in the law.A Birmingham prostitute leaves friends and family behind to seek her fortune in London. Back home, a sympathetic social worker and a solicitor form a support group to campaign for a change in the law.

Voir les informations de production sur IMDbPro

NOTE IMDb

6,1/10

150

MA NOTE

Voir les informations de production sur IMDbPro

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Avis des utilisateurs3

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Avis à la une

6Goloh

Could have been a documentary

It's hard to believe I am the first to review a 1980 film, but these things happen, so here goes: this film following the lives of various British prostitutes, social service workers, police, nasty escort service operators, politicians, and customers (not necessarily in such discrete categories, either) is absolutely in documentary format. The dialog sounds unscripted, almost stream-of-consciousness--and I am not certain whether this is a compliment to the actors or not, but they all, without exception, seemed perfectly suited to their roles.

The tone is not judgmental. It's as though a camera happened to be there during the many possible incidents that occur in a prostitute's daily life. As a result, sections of the film did seem to go on and on and ON, and one scene in particular was notable: a sociologist explaining in the most technical, dry academic terms about dynamics of the profession, to a woman who could barely stifle a giggle. All she was interested in was him.

There is just enough nudity, male and female. It didn't seem gratuitous, and it definitely wasn't sexy. It was just there. You might find yourself uncomfortable, feeling like a voyeur, but none of this is anything an adult shouldn't be able to handle. The film's ending is neither happy nor sad. It just tails off.

Footnote: IMDb's cover art for this film is probably not correct, because this is a British film, not Chinese.

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Anecdotes
In an early courtroom scene of this drama set in Birmingham, there's a chance to see the Campbell brothers, Ali & Duncan, from the reggae group UB40, as uncredited extras.

Citations
Louise: Thing is, however much I try to put myself in their
[a prostitute's]
Louise: situation, I don't know how they can bring themselves to do it.
Griff: Well the sociological work on prostitution isn't very helpful either. There's work by Polsky where he's taking a functionalist perspective related to the Parsonian model of functional imperatives and what he's suggesting is that prostitution could be regarded as functional for society, in the sense that it acts as some sort of safety valve, helping to maintain the double-institutionalisation of sex, both within marriage and within a few specified sex acts. Of course, there's all the logical problems with the functionalist model - problem of reification, tautology and teleology. I personally tend to take a phenomenological view, by which I mean that the question that the question that I'm interested in is how prostitution becomes to be seen as a thing in the world. How an act that is seen as prostitution gains the status of something real in a decontextualised sort of sense, when in fact how you could view it would be that the candidate act of prostitution relies upon a reflexivity between the candidate act and the indexical features of the social situation. So in other words, we're talking about doing it for a good degree, or for promotion at work, or for a night out at the pictures and a meal, or any of those things. I mean what is it?
Louise: Have you ever met one?
Griff: What? Well, how would I know? Not as far as I know. I feel a bit silly. What I'm trying to say it that sociologists don't know a great deal about it. Will that do?

Versions alternatives
The UK theatrical version was cut to remove explicit sight of a man being masturbated in a massage parlour. In 2011, the cut was waived due to the bleak and unglamorous context, which lacked any "sexual charge".