San Francisco Weekly — May 23, 2012
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Film
Whores’ Glory
Not rated. Opens Friday at San Francisco theaters.
As with meat processing and politics, the day-to-day drama, tedium, and heartbreak of prostitution have little to do with our spoon-fed fantasies about the profession. Michael Glawogger’s fearless Whores’ Glory demystifies trick turning with a bluntness and artistry that’s sure to make even the most jaded of us choke on our next sitcom-hooker-joke chuckle. Glawogger is most interested in the ways who redom supports and contradicts a culture and to that end, divides Whores’ Glory into three distinct parts. The first sets the stage in a “fishbowl” brothel in Bangkok, where middle-class johns live out their glitzy porn fantasies in streamlined, near-antiseptic conditions. The shock here comes from how matter of fact it all is — the workaday routine of the girls puts the grind in “bump and grind.” It’s in the second segment, in a prostitution district in Bangladesh, that the ghastly sadness and lack of options inherent in the trade fully surface, as dozens of women and girls vie (sometimes violently) for a steady stream of primarily Muslim men and forestall impoverished, lonely old age as best they can. The final third, in the Mexican border town of Reynosa, brings the baroque: Drive-through hooking is the norm, while between gigs — and we finally see what whores do for their money here — the women, many of whom were kidnapped into prostitution, bond over hard drugs and a black-magic strain of Catholicism. If Glawogger resists feeling anything besides clinical interest in his case studies, it hardly detracts from their humanity. MARK HOLCOMB
Keyhole
Rated R. Opens Friday at the Roxie.
The latest phantasmagoria of cinematic quotation from Canadian director Guy Maddin, Keyhole is an extremely loose adaptation of the Odyssey. Jason Patric plays Ulysses Pick, leader of a two-bit gang who, carrying a nearly drowned girl on his back, returns home after a long absence. With his criminal accomplices confined to the downstairs sitting room, Ulysses journeys through the labyrinthine house, joined by the girl (Brooke Palsson) and a bound-and-gagged hostage (David Wontner), who Ulysses doesn’t immediately realize is his only living son, Manners. Ulysses’s goal is to reach the attic bedroom where his wife, Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini), lays next to her naked elderly father (Louis Negin), chained to her bed. The father lures his son-in-law with a siren call — ”Remember, Ulysses, remember” — but the house is full of roadblocks in the form of locked doors, debilitating visions of the past, and inchoate anxieties brought to life. A swirling stew of Maddin’s pet themes — family ties, irrepressible sexuality, the weather — Keyhole is less narrative than architectural: It doesn’t move from scene to scene, but rather from room to room. The house is a physical stand-in for a dreaming, troubled mind, and the film is so unrelentingly dreamlike that its sudden end mimics the sensation of snapping awake from deep sleep. But whose dream is it? Who is haunted, and who is doing the haunting? Shot digitally in chiaroscuro black-and white, nearly every frame complicated by multiple exposure effects and strategically harsh lighting, Keyhole is stunning to look at, but frustrating to look deeply into. KARINA LONGWORTH
Polisse
Not rated. Opens Friday at the Embarcadero.
An episodic ensemble piece based on cases handled by Paris’s Child Protection Unit, Polisse is a mutant beast: Imagine an entire season of Law & Order: SVU condensed to feature length and then spliced with DNA culled from the deadpan faux-doc institutional satire of In the Loop and the sex-on-the-job soap of Grey’s Anatomy. Co-writer/director Maïwenn co-stars as Melissa, a documentary photographer embedded within a close-knit family of investigators who spends their days interrogating victims and perps of crimes against kids. The style is extremely naturalistic, with the invisible camera work and overlapping dialogue helping to smooth out the wild inconsistencies in the material. The intensity of the unit’s work takes its toll — countless scenes devolve into tantrums, rants, and giggle fits, and there’s ample, predictable trouble at home. Less predictable is the wide, wild range of emotional response on display: The cops will be deeply affected by one case, self-righteously railing against bureaucracy for not being able to do more, and mock the next, sometimes even to the victim’s face. Although it suggests that these cops are not always great at their jobs, Polisse isn’t critical of the CPU officers — on the contrary, it’s extremely sympathetic to the impossible position the investigators are put in. Even when they’re ostensibly doing the “right” thing, they’re also making anxious judgment calls and policing the perversions and personal habits of others. Polisse is all over the place (including Maïwenn’s increasing focus on her own character’s not-terribly-interesting romantic subplot), but that’s not necessarily a bad thing: The strange, unsettling juxtapositions, even when mashing up the mawkish and mockery, are full of life. K.L.
Not rated. Opens Friday at San Francisco theaters.
As with meat processing and politics, the day-to-day drama, tedium, and heartbreak of prostitution have little to do with our spoon-fed fantasies about the profession. Michael Glawogger’s fearless Whores’ Glory demystifies trick turning with a bluntness and artistry that’s sure to make even the most jaded of us choke on our next sitcom-hooker-joke chuckle. Glawogger is most interested in the ways who redom supports and contradicts a culture and to that end, divides Whores’ Glory into three distinct parts. The first sets the stage in a “fishbowl” brothel in Bangkok, where middle-class johns live out their glitzy porn fantasies in streamlined, near-antiseptic conditions. The shock here comes from how matter of fact it all is — the workaday routine of the girls puts the grind in “bump and grind.” It’s in the second segment, in a prostitution district in Bangladesh, that the ghastly sadness and lack of options inherent in the trade fully surface, as dozens of women and girls vie (sometimes violently) for a steady stream of primarily Muslim men and forestall impoverished, lonely old age as best they can. The final third, in the Mexican border town of Reynosa, brings the baroque: Drive-through hooking is the norm, while between gigs — and we finally see what whores do for their money here — the women, many of whom were kidnapped into prostitution, bond over hard drugs and a black-magic strain of Catholicism. If Glawogger resists feeling anything besides clinical interest in his case studies, it hardly detracts from their humanity. MARK HOLCOMB
Keyhole
Rated R. Opens Friday at the Roxie.
The latest phantasmagoria of cinematic quotation from Canadian director Guy Maddin, Keyhole is an extremely loose adaptation of the Odyssey. Jason Patric plays Ulysses Pick, leader of a two-bit gang who, carrying a nearly drowned girl on his back, returns home after a long absence. With his criminal accomplices confined to the downstairs sitting room, Ulysses journeys through the labyrinthine house, joined by the girl (Brooke Palsson) and a bound-and-gagged hostage (David Wontner), who Ulysses doesn’t immediately realize is his only living son, Manners. Ulysses’s goal is to reach the attic bedroom where his wife, Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini), lays next to her naked elderly father (Louis Negin), chained to her bed. The father lures his son-in-law with a siren call — ”Remember, Ulysses, remember” — but the house is full of roadblocks in the form of locked doors, debilitating visions of the past, and inchoate anxieties brought to life. A swirling stew of Maddin’s pet themes — family ties, irrepressible sexuality, the weather — Keyhole is less narrative than architectural: It doesn’t move from scene to scene, but rather from room to room. The house is a physical stand-in for a dreaming, troubled mind, and the film is so unrelentingly dreamlike that its sudden end mimics the sensation of snapping awake from deep sleep. But whose dream is it? Who is haunted, and who is doing the haunting? Shot digitally in chiaroscuro black-and white, nearly every frame complicated by multiple exposure effects and strategically harsh lighting, Keyhole is stunning to look at, but frustrating to look deeply into. KARINA LONGWORTH
Polisse
Not rated. Opens Friday at the Embarcadero.
An episodic ensemble piece based on cases handled by Paris’s Child Protection Unit, Polisse is a mutant beast: Imagine an entire season of Law & Order: SVU condensed to feature length and then spliced with DNA culled from the deadpan faux-doc institutional satire of In the Loop and the sex-on-the-job soap of Grey’s Anatomy. Co-writer/director Maïwenn co-stars as Melissa, a documentary photographer embedded within a close-knit family of investigators who spends their days interrogating victims and perps of crimes against kids. The style is extremely naturalistic, with the invisible camera work and overlapping dialogue helping to smooth out the wild inconsistencies in the material. The intensity of the unit’s work takes its toll — countless scenes devolve into tantrums, rants, and giggle fits, and there’s ample, predictable trouble at home. Less predictable is the wide, wild range of emotional response on display: The cops will be deeply affected by one case, self-righteously railing against bureaucracy for not being able to do more, and mock the next, sometimes even to the victim’s face. Although it suggests that these cops are not always great at their jobs, Polisse isn’t critical of the CPU officers — on the contrary, it’s extremely sympathetic to the impossible position the investigators are put in. Even when they’re ostensibly doing the “right” thing, they’re also making anxious judgment calls and policing the perversions and personal habits of others. Polisse is all over the place (including Maïwenn’s increasing focus on her own character’s not-terribly-interesting romantic subplot), but that’s not necessarily a bad thing: The strange, unsettling juxtapositions, even when mashing up the mawkish and mockery, are full of life. K.L.
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