Very Young Girls

I saw a special screening in Greenwich Village last night and the whole crowd was gasping, crying and laughing together. It's truly a tour de force, and you fall in love with these girls as they talk about their hopes, their painful experiences and the surprising, frightening truth about teenage prostitution in America. Highly recommended. You might think a movie like this would be a drag, but it's not--it's surprisingly entertaining, and really a fascinating, wonderful experience.

"Issue" documentaries carry the danger of being too focused on polemics and not enough on the people involved or the cinematic experience. The filmmakers avoid this nicely by focusing on the girls themselves, following their ups and downs and giving them the chance to express their contradictions. This is especially effective, I thought, in a sequence when one girl cannot help but call her pimp and tell him she loves him.