Whore’s Glory (Michael Glawogger, 2011): Austria

Reviewed by Krista Marquez at the Santa Barbara Film Festival

Whore’s Glory shows the reality of making a living with the controversial profession of prostitution.  Michael Glawogger (Contact High, Slumming) visits Mexico, Thailand and India where he meets women who share what their worlds are like in their seemingly surreal lives.

In Bangkok, we meet the ladies of the Fishbowl, a place where women sit in a large group behind a glass wall waiting for a man to call their number so that they may make enough money for their bus ride home, if they’re lucky. They dream of different, better lives, as they say.  In Bangladesh, women are aggressive with one another about the prostitution market, because, well they have got to pay rent to stay where they are, in the brothel.  Some of these women speak of the embarrassment of their work, that this is what their mothers did, so they must do the same because it is all they know how to do, how to make a living.  On the contrary, one woman said she was happy with her life at the brothel.  Mexico was also a harsh place to visit.  The women are shown doing drugs, which they say make them feel better than they do while living their normal lives of shame.

The heartbreaking reality really gets inside of the viewer.  It saddening but also touching.  I don’t recommend this film to those who are sensitive to the subject or who are offended by explicit sexual material.