Gushing Prayer: A 15-Year-Old Prostitute

The danger of falling for MUBI's "film of the day" is that sometimes one trusts their curation a bit too much and, with no reviews on IMDB, nothing to counter that.

However, on the positive side, this is clearly a film attempting to do a bit more than the usual, and transcend its small budget (e.g. mainly in black and white, with small excursions into colour). Some of the acting is not that bad, particularly from the main character, but others are clearly not very natural on camera. In my view, this isn't helped by the script, which is attempting to delve into philosophical matters, including the ultimate meanings of sex and life. This leads to some fairly stilted moments - not unlike de Sade's Philosophy in the Bedroom - where they break off from the action for a long disquisition on other matters. This isn't in his league, though.

Even though it's not a long film, I realised about two-thirds of the way through that I was just waiting for it to end, which is never a good sign. Maybe I wasn't in the mood, but maybe that's the problem.

Not recommended, really.