Yo puta

Many of the previous comments were close-minded. I haven't seen this film in several months, but it's ingrained in my mind. "The Life" was not about supporting prostitution, but more about the reasons/situations that lead to and exist, in such a "profession" world-wide. The element of documentary and fiction was a different take on the subject. If the fictional part of the story was just as candid and raw as the documentary portion, then the film would've been better. The subtitles were somewhat distracting due to speed. But overall, the film accomplished it's task. The theme holds, "Prostitution shouldn't be glorified, but accepted as reality. Knowing reality illuminates the real world."-shav

The producers of this film seem not to have decided what they really wanted to do - a documentary? some social comment about prostitution? a drama about how a young student is almost driven into prostitution? a soft porn movie? The result is a mix of all those, without really being any of them. Denise Richards and Daryl Hannah seem very little at ease with their very thin acts inter-threaded with what seem to be interviews with real practicants of the older profession and porn actors and directors. The social comment is not consequent, sometimes forgiving, sometimes harsh, and in any case it does not say anything new about the subject that was or is said in any TV documentary. It is hard to say why they did this film, and who would be really interested in it.

A writer is interviewing prostitutes, porn stars and gigolos for her latest book. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, the scholarship of the student of PHD of anthropology Rebecca (Denise Richards) finishes and she has financial problem to keep her apartment. Her neighbor and call-girl Adrianna (Daryl Hannah) introduces her to prostitution.

"Yo Puta" is a weird and pointless movie that explores the underworld of sex through interviews. In 1991, the sexy Theresa Russell filmed the good Ken Russell's "Whore" talking to the camera in a pseudo-documentary style, and the result was an original movie. Unfortunately "Yo Puta" wastes interesting information in a dull screenplay. I have recently watched "Lilja 4-Ever", "Anjos do Sol" and "Human Trafficking", and all these movies are related to the contemporary slavery of the traffic of women. "In Yo Puta", this subject is approached and lost in the shallow screenplay. The story of Rebecca and Adrianna is awful and ridiculous. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Garotas de Programa" ("Call-Girls")

This was a complete waste of eventually useful ideas. I enjoy a filmmaker who tries to get out of the preconceived canons and ways to tell a story. Nowadays, the best cinematic essays one can find is on how to reformulate narrative devices and story telling, and in a second plan, visual renewed ideas. If the eye narrative is in conformity with the storytelling device, that's when we have great films.

Here we have a work by someone who probably agrees with what i told above, but, at least in this try (second try, according to IMDb) was completely clumsy, useless, bad tasted. This is a terrible work, it pretended much, it tried to do things in an imaginative way, but the final work is a disaster, originated, i believe, in the lack of sensitivity of who worked this.

So, we're being told a fictionalized narrative, multi layered. This means we have a great number of threads to follow (here associated with different prostitutes). The device used is the false documentary. In the middle of that assumed fakery, we have a fiction line, with Richards, Hannah and Almeida.The problem is how rigidly this construction is made, and how little imaginative it becomes in its development. I mean, the actresses playing prostitutes (i really suppose they were all actresses, i just had a doubt on one or two) are a complete cliché, someone sit down and thought "how many kinds of prostitutes, and prostitution motivations, and prostitutes social conditions ca i think of?". And that's it. We have the African black nymphomaniac, we have the Brazilian hot "sexual available" lookalike prostitute, we have the Latin American Indian descendant prostitute, we have the high class escort (who is french!), we have the male prostitute. We have those who like what they do, those who do it for money, and those who don't have other choice. So useless, so superficial, so boring, such a waste of time. There are such great examples on fake documentaries about half real realities ('F for Fake' being at the top of this list) that it is terrible that someone could do this like we see here. What's the point of portraying people that look like prostitutes, talk like several stereotypes of prostitution would talk, act like prostitutes, live like prostitutes, but are in fact actors? The question is: why not place real prostitutes and make a real documentary if there is no manipulation, no intention at all behind the fake documentary?

Than, to conclude, the fiction story. An anthropology student, virgin, who is studying prostitution. Her neighbour is a prostitute and due to financial trouble, she comes to enter the job as well. What was the point? In the end, this developed as those common documentaries made for TV channels, History, Biography, Odisseia, etc. With an exception: with those documentaries, one can at least take valuable facts, if you don't know them, and if you like being distracted (i don't) you can rely on the awful fictional bits.

The visual resolution of this is made in accordance to the uselessness of the story choices. Most of the way we have women detached from whatever the environment was where they were speaking, and pasted above the photograph of a cheap hotel where prostitution happens. Other times we have useless visual tricks, of deforming images, and highly saturated colours.

My opinion: 1/5 avoid it.

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Still not sure what it exactly was that I just watched here. This is a strange mix of documentary and a scripted plot, featuring both actors and real prostitutes.

Exactly what does the movie try to achieve? What is its message? Does it just try to give us a view into the world of porn and prostitution? If so, than what is the point of it, since this movie shows and tells very little new or interesting. It's filled with interviews that just becomes too much of the same after a while. Even though the movie is only 87 minutes short, it feels much longer.

The movie feels like a rather weird and failed experiment to mixes documentary with a scripted story and characters. The movie is made in documentary style mostly but the style, scripted situations and actors makes the whole movie feel rather artificial. A weird and failed fusion of fact and fiction.

Especially the style was a problem to me. Fast, pointless cuts but the weirdest thing to watch, was that the backgrounds, during the interviews, were all obviously added later to the movie. The movie tries to be style full and beautiful but it just isn't. It instead is fake looking and for most part the style seems pointless and overdone.

Also a big problem is, that the movie just isn't interesting to watch. The movie doesn't say or show anything new or refreshing and even those who are interested in the subject will find very little to enjoy in this movie. It makes the movie very tiresome and boring to watch, already after the a couple of minutes.

The 'plotline' featuring Denise Richards and Daryl Hannah is like the entire movie; pointless and boring. Amazing to see that two professional actors lend their talents for such a production. Joaquim de Almeida also shows up in the movie. I'll bet they all thought they were making something refreshing and revolutionary here...

Avoid. That's the best and most sensible thing I can say about this movie.

3/10

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