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Jenny Lu’s look at the horrors of life for immigrant women in a London massage parlour is upsettingly vivid

In the wake of the financial crisis, literature graduate Tina (Teresa Daley) struggles to find work after moving to London from her native Taiwan to be with her British boyfriend, Frank (Joshua Whitehouse). As a stopgap she takes a job as a receptionist in a massage parlour, gaining first-hand insight into the horrors of the sex industry. There’s selfish mamasan Lily (Sophie Gopsill); sultry, blond-haired student Mei (Amanda Fan); and single mother Sasa (Shiang-chyi Chen), hardened by years of punishing sex work. When shy new girl Anna (Shuang Teng) turns up intending to earn quick cash to pay off a family debt, she’s totally out of her depth.

Taiwan-born, UK-based writer-director Jenny Lu’s script is functional, with leaden dialogue and plotting that tells rather than reveals. Yet the performances are painfully alive,...

A Taiwanese graduate becomes embroiled in the sex trade in Jenny Lu’s angst-ridden study of the immigrant experience

First-time feature director Jenny Lu directs this intensely felt personal drama about the immigrant experience in the UK and the accompanying state of invisibility – part survival strategy, part byproduct of prejudice and hypocrisy.

Tina, played by Teresa Daley, is a young Taiwanese arts graduate living with her British boyfriend in London, frantically sending out CVs, getting no job offers and desperately short on cash. Then she gets word that someone needs a “receptionist”, but not at the kind of hipster media company she once yearned for. Tina has to be the “receptionist” for a brothel run out of a rented suburban semi by the motherly Lily (Sophie Gopsill), which employs two cynical yet melancholy sex workers.

Writer/ director Jenny Lu lifts the lid on the seedy underworld of massage parlours and desperate working girls in her debut feature, a well intentioned, if somewhat under-baked tale of a young lady desperate to earn some cash.

For Tina (Teresa Daley) has recently graduated from university, and moved into her boyfriend’s poky flat as she sets out to find a job of her dreams.

After much searching and little luck, Tina stumbles across an advert for a phone receptionist. Figuring it’s well within her skill set, she heads over for an interview, only to discover she’s being offered a job at an illegal massage parlour, where a trio of young ladies service numerous clients a day.

As her desperation for cash increases, Tina finds herself taking the job on, keeping the truth hidden from her boyfriend while pulling in enough cash to get by (he’s...