Whores’ Glory (Michael Glawogger 2011): Germany/Austria

Reviewed by Jan Mclaughlin at Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

 Whores’ Glory tells the story of prostitution around the world. This documentary revolves around the individual hopes, needs and experiences of these working women. Three countries, three religions, three languages. Whores’ Glory is Austrian documentary film maker and director/writer”s third film in a trilogy about working conditions in developing nations which began with Mega Cities in 1998 and Working Mans Death.

Bangkok Thailand: A Chinese owned brothel called the Fish Tank. The segment opens with women stopping at a Buddhist temple shrine. They are praying for clients, they punch time clocks and there is an on site hair and makeup salon for the girls. The johns sit at a bar setting and the girls are seated behind a plexi-glass partition on carpeted benches.  As the customers arrive a sales assistant points out which prostitute he would recommend. Just like selling vacuum cleaners. Most often the family’s of these girls have no idea what they do for a living.

Faridpur Bangladesh (The City of Joy). A prostitute district with some 600 working girls, the majority look between 14-18 years old. Unlike Bangkok’s ordered Fish Tank there is extreme poverty. In the opening scene a girl of 15 is negotiating on the crumbling street with a john. The deal is sealed and she slips into a doorway to get a condom from her mother. Here the girls family desperately depends on her income. Sold, coached and pimped out by  their mothers this is a generational pattern with no way out.

Reynosa Mexico (La Zona): A Texas boarder town , La Zona is  drive thru sex for sale.  It’s dusty roads and clapboard one room chicken-coop conditions is where these women work. Here you see alcoholism and drug addiction ravaging their lives as they pray to their female catholic patron saint for hookers.

This Mexican segment is where there is gritty graphic  sex scenes, some so powerful that they resonated with me till long after I left the theatre. You can’t help but ask how director Glawogger and his crew gained access to these premises. A brothel is the place where you are most unwelcome with a camera.  Editor Monika Willi must have trimmed a mass of footage to an engaging 150 minutes. The music is female-vocal rock and pop songs from P.J. Harvey and Cocorosie.

The film depicts human trafficking and drug addiction. You have to put your preconceived ideas aside. The Madams in Bangladesh are brutal in their business procedures but are also capable of being loving mothers. Whores’ Glory poses questions like why does prostitution exist, how does it work and what does it do to all of us?