WHORE'S GLORY

Writer/Director: Michael Glawogger
Running time: 110 minutes

SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL Screenings - Wed 6 Jun 8.15pm; Fri 8 Jun 8.30pm.

Rating: 3.5/5

 

Glimmers of humour and hope can’t quite hide the sad desperation and air of inevitability the subjects caught on camera exude in Austrian filmmaker’s Michael Glawogger’s Whore’s Glory. The director delves deep within the sordid lives of prostitutes, those that rule over them and those that partake of them in an expose made all the remarkable for the willingness of all involved to be captured on film.

Whore’s Glory is the third film in Glawogger’s series of documentaries loosely referred to as his ‘Globilization Trilogy’; it began with 1998s Megacities and was followed by 2005s Workingman’s Death. They are stark documents that explore the marginalization of the poor, the denial of their human needs as urbanization spreads and the exploitation of their weaknesses. Arguably, Whore’s Glory is the most arduous to endure, graphically portraying as it does the daily routine of cold sexual acts (sometimes as many as 40 men, cites one third-world working girl), the strong religious faith that helps many to survive the life and the self-medicating addictions that numb their pain.

Glawogger’s camera offers a truly immersive experience, that much is certain, but there is very little about his style that offers judgement. The lives he captures are what they are, existing within the trade for sexual favours in which men of all social standings indulge. The film roams from Thailand’s plush men’s club The Fish Tank, where johns choose their girl from a selection behind a glass wall; to ‘The City of Joy’ compound in Faridpur, Bangladesh where den mothers abuse their teenage charges if set men-quotas aren’t met; to the doorway whores of Mexico. It is on the dusty streets of this township where Glawogger’s film becomes most tragic; he is permitted access to the aging prostitute’s stark living conditions, withering mental state brought on by crack dependency and, finally, the actual process by which they make their living (sensitive viewers beware).

It will be revelatory to all but those who actually perpetuate the industry. It is hard to reconcile that such exploitation of women continues to exist, or that some women have become so desperate as to depend on it. The film’s most powerful moment is when a young Bangladesh worker paints a very clear image of what life is like for ‘working girls’ and of her clinging to a belief that all this will someday disappear for her. The hopelessness of her situation sometimes infests Glawogger’s film, making it all seem pointlessly depressing at times, but it is a powerful work nevertheless.