Sorry in advance if a thread exists on this topic, but couldn't find it with a quick search.
I am interested in knowing about movies in which prostitution is a central theme. There are of course many well known ones. What are your favourites? The most interesting ones? Ones you have seen recently that you can describe and recommend? Any less well known ones that you can bring to our attention?
The most recent one I have seen is Bunuel's "Belle de Jour", starring Catherine Deneuve and based on the classic 1928 novel by Joseph Kessel. I recently read the novel and watched the movie. Both are major works, and I recommend both. The movie follows the novel quite closely, with a few surrealistic flourishes thrown in by Bunuel.
Severine is the beautiful young wife of a handsome, successful young doctor. They love each other and are very affluent. But they have no sex life. Severine is essentially frigid, but has fantasies involving being roughly treated by lower class working men. Hearing that one of her less affluent married friends has started working in a brothel, she becomes obsessed with the idea, and indeed starts doing it herself, even though she doesn't need the money. One of her customers is a cheap hoodlum. They fall passionately in love, with disastrous consequences...
The story, accrding to Kessel, was intended to explore the disconnect between love and sexual passion....that one doesn't necessarily imply the other...
I am interested in knowing about movies in which prostitution is a central theme. There are of course many well known ones. What are your favourites? The most interesting ones? Ones you have seen recently that you can describe and recommend? Any less well known ones that you can bring to our attention?
The most recent one I have seen is Bunuel's "Belle de Jour", starring Catherine Deneuve and based on the classic 1928 novel by Joseph Kessel. I recently read the novel and watched the movie. Both are major works, and I recommend both. The movie follows the novel quite closely, with a few surrealistic flourishes thrown in by Bunuel.
Severine is the beautiful young wife of a handsome, successful young doctor. They love each other and are very affluent. But they have no sex life. Severine is essentially frigid, but has fantasies involving being roughly treated by lower class working men. Hearing that one of her less affluent married friends has started working in a brothel, she becomes obsessed with the idea, and indeed starts doing it herself, even though she doesn't need the money. One of her customers is a cheap hoodlum. They fall passionately in love, with disastrous consequences...
The story, accrding to Kessel, was intended to explore the disconnect between love and sexual passion....that one doesn't necessarily imply the other...