Movie: Whores’ Glory
Director: Michael Glawogger
Rating: ***1/2
A former prostitute who now manages several girls sits down to talk to a new entrant at a brothel in Faridpur, Bangladesh. She is told that she should work for a year, be well-behaved and solicit clients to earn a better future in a place where hundreds of whores cater to men on a daily basis.
In Bangkok, young hookers stop at a Buddhist shrine every morning before work, where they dress presentably (revealing most important assets), pin a number on themselves and sit in a glass box to be picked by horny, married men who visit the place because their wives at home have become cold.
A hooker in Mexico proudly says she has fucked men from all over the world and that she gets paid to have fun. She says even if they have superstar or supermodels at home, men go to the brothels because it’s different. But what she really yearns for is love, but she can’t fall in love with a client because it’s against the rules.
In this touching and riveting documentary ‘Whores’ Glory’, prostitution is considered a legitimate, glitzy business run in the middle of a busy street in Bangkok; a depressingly filthy family affair in Bangladesh and a low-rent operation in Mexico.
It’s about prostitution in miserable poverty, not prostitution as a “job”, but does not make any distinction. The prostitutes in Bangladesh and Mexico were in absolutely horrifying conditions – they were forced into it, threatened if they tried to leave, and barely paying for food whereas in Bangkok it’s an occupational choice. They can get other jobs, but choose to do this. Those are two very different circumstances that can have very different effects on people physically and emotionally.
I really wonder how the director managed to capture all the candid conversations. In a standout scene, a hooker in Mexico tells her client that she doesn’t care if he doesn’t come, and that she can only fuck him for 20 minutes. Or the scene where a senior prostitute laughingly talks about the time when she faked blowjobs and her clients didn’t even have a clue about it. It’s straight from the heart, unadulterated and poignant although it’s said with a pinch of sarcasm.
Glawogger also helps us understand how different cultures deal with sex, which is an important constituent of life, and thus an essential factor in any profitable market. He reminds us that it’s a service so much in demand that someone will definitely take up the dirty job to provide to others.
The first segment in Bangkok reiterates the fact that men are the commodities, because they’re the ones with money but not women, who merely offer services for a price and are worthless without men. In the second segment in Bangladesh, a local barber says all men in the area are indebted to the whores in the brothel because if not for them they would be screwing cows and goats on streets and would have turned into rapists by now. These acute observations, which form most of the documentary’s narrative, make up for an engaging discussion.
‘Whores’ Glory’ is a sad look at prostitution around the world from different standpoints we would like to believe doesn’t exist.
