Callgirl

It's Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. Aleksandra/Sasha is from a small town studying English. She's also working as a prostitute. Her customer has a heart-attack after taking Viagra. She leaves after taking his money and calling the front desk. The man dies. Her friend Vesna is shocked that she bought a flat. Her father reads about the dead man in the newspaper and the "Slovenian Girl" who was with him. The mystery becomes a media sensation and two thugs threaten her to work for them. She escapes but she is facing mounting mortgage payments.

The two thugs are scary and that section is thrilling. It's a harrowing escape. One expects the thrills to continue but it turns into something else. Sasha's lies and manipulations continue. She shows herself not solely a victim but she is also constantly being victimized. It's a compelling character. It would be great to have a more definitive ending instead of a fade-to-black. There is something left unsaid and unexplored.

Alexandra is a college student trying to make ends meet for her expensive apartment by becoming a call girl. She is attractive, but has a sullen personality that makes you wonder if she finds anything in her world interesting. And as the film progresses she manipulates others, including her father, through her constant scheming, and lying.

Unfortunately she eventually turns a trick with the wrong guy and while she manages to slip away from him, his presence remains throughout the film. Despite not liking Alexandra, I found I wanted her to reform, love her father and escape all that set her on the wrong path. Better than I thought for a low budget eastern European movie.

This film on the life of a college student doubling up as a call girl is watchable but not particularly moving. First of, the girl went into prostitution not to support her college education, but to maintain a flat in a choice location. Right there my feeling for her as a young woman deserving sympathy evaporated. The acting was decent, and if you expect to see much nudity in this film you will be disappointed.

Instead, we were exposed to the array of her clientele, from a generous join from Britain to one obsessed with hygiene - rubber gloves in both hands. There was this usual side story of her fleeing from two men who wanted to pimp her, and from the police due to the Viagra-induced death on one client. However, the story overall is fairly simplistic and not engaging enough.

This is a film from Film Movements, and I actually expected a higher quality film. As is, it is enjoyable to watch - but just barely.

Slovenka is the name used in ads by Aleksandra to hook up with men for money. She is a twenty three year old college student studying English, and like many girls around the world, finds it a way to pay her tuition. Her parents are divorced, she has a good relationship with her father, but hates her mother. She lies, cheats and steals, with no real moral compass.

Nina Ivanisin is Aleksandra, and she drifts seamlessly through the film with a natural grace and charm. The story is depressing as she gets tangled up with local, dangerous gangsters who, at one point, dangle her out of the window of a high rise. Slovenka is a cold and dark view of humanity; this ain't Pretty Woman with Julia Roberts and her goofy smile. Ivansin is a real actress showing a full range of emotions. There is no happily ever after.

This film comes off as a "slice of life" ...of an unusual life. Its pace is neither hurried nor slow. It doesn't rely on either symbolism (neither obvious nor obscure) or literary references. Except for a few places where bits of music are used to great effect to convey meaning, this film is a dialog-driven story that doesn't require any sense of style. Although a few events may be a little out of strict order, this film doesn't rely on cinematic techniques like flashbacks. Everything we know of the characters' motivations comes from what they say and do - there's no memory nor daydreams nor interior monologue nor voice over. There are no references to either previous or current "politics" (other than the inconvenient traffic snarls caused by the presence of EU officials). This film is not preachy, nor even moralistic; if anything it's somewhat ambiguous or understated.

It's too bad this film will probably be classified as "foreign" or "art house", as it's much more mainstream than that would suggest. While this film is not really about "sexiness", there are enough scenes with naked flesh to place it firmly in the current worldwide context. Likewise although this film is not really a "thriller", there's enough suspense (and even some danger) to make it clear it should be taken seriously. The filming and acting are quite good. One of the best examples of good supporting acting is portraying a band that's adequate but by no means great; the required level of mediocrity is played quite well.

The dialog is clear and easy to hear throughout. Subtitles are provided whenever necessary and are presented in large yellow letters that are consistently easy to read. I have one quibble though: several places an important message arrives on a cellphone as a text message in a language other than English, and is _not_ subtitled. I always eventually managed to figure out what was going on anyway ...but I would have very warmly welcomed the subtitling of the text messages as well as the dialog.

Much of what we see are all the practical problems and little details of a call girl life: multiple cell phones, code names, harassment by pimps, dying clients, mentally unstable clients, unattractive (downright ugly?) clients, continual fear of exposure, suspicion from hotel staff, inability to ask police to intervene normally, unwelcome carryover of massive lying and acting into other areas of life, difficulty balancing two separate lives (sleep, deadlines, finances, etc.), and so on. We also see more typical lives in both a smaller and a large Slovenian city. In the smaller city we're introduced to the overpowering presence and distortion caused by foreign (especially "American") culture. In the large city we see the architecture one would see every day, the disruption of normal life caused by the presence of EU officials, and the ubiquitous presence of the English language (both its very frequent use and all the attempts to learn it better - something like fully half the dialog doesn't even have to be subtitled for English speaking viewers).

The most important theme is the "alienation" of big city life, and the relatively reduced (but still substantial) alienation in a smaller city. The second important theme is the "meaninglessness" of life everywhere -- the film isn't saturated by the broodiness one tends to associate with nihilism, but adding together what all the various characters say (including things they _don't_ tell each other) it's hard to draw any other conclusion. Many other potential themes are given glancing attention: excessive materialism, fleetingness of relationships, essential isolation of each individual, growing to adulthood as a "launch" of a new lifestyle, inheritance of mental traits, inadvertently becoming what we despise, bleeding together of life spheres intended to stay "separate", and so on. The frequent references to the "Slovenian Girl" -and even the effects of the death of a client- provide convenient handles for describing this film, but aren't really what it's about.