Blu-ray Releases: Imprint: Whore (1991) - Reviewed

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Courtesy of Imprint
The late idiosyncratic godfather of the French New Wave cinema movement Jean-Luc Godard once remarked the best form of film criticism possible is to not respond with words like I’m doing here but rather for people to break down and make a movie in response.  While that sentence remains debatable in theory, in practice the concept of answering one film with another is common in the film business.  From Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo answering Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon to Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris answering Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the notion of one filmmaker criticizing or reinterpreting another’s work by presenting their own new work in response is as old as the medium itself.

 
Which brings us to the movie title you ‘can’t say but see’, Ken Russell’s 1991 NC-17 prostitution drama Whore.  A snarky rebuke of Garry Marshall’s hit Julia Roberts’ starring romantic comedy Pretty Woman which Russell felt trivialized the hardships endured by sex workers, the arguably last great film of Ken Russell and second take on prostitution (Crimes of Passion being the first) is perhaps the usually flamboyant provocateur’s tamest and most grounded film to date.  Where earlier Russell’s tended towards absurdist detours ala Altered States, Gothic or The Lair of the White Worm, Whore adapted by Russell and Deborah Dalton from David Hines’ monologue play Bondage is a fourth wall breaking matter of fact exchange with the film’s titular heroine trying to survive in a dangerous netherworld. 
 
Starring a bravura Theresa Russell (Nicolas Roeg’s Bad Timing and Insignificance) as LA street hooker Liz, the film follows her exploits and degradations for survival in the past through flashback and the present where she’s trying to escape the clutches of her domineering pimp Blake (Benjamin Mouton).  Throughout this mostly dialogue driven stage-play-to-film transposition, the jaded battered Liz looks into the camera and addresses the audience directly, leaning onto our shoulder giving us the gory details with the earnestness of a confessional.  In between clients she encounters a homeless man named Rasta (Antonio Fargas) more keen on friendship than transaction, Liz recounts her difficult childhood while trying to evade the pursuits of her nefarious pimp.

 
A bit garrulous and episodic with a combination of graphic dialogue and sometimes explicit sexual content, Russell’s immodest yet honest look at the life of a sex worker on the run from her pimp shies away from the director’s usual forays into excesses like The Music Lovers or The Devils, instead getting to know this woman and her imprisonment out in the open world like a documentarian.  Though consistently snarky with occasional trademark Russellian campy acting, this might be the late provocateur’s most straightforward picture which for all of its illicit subject matter and especially its title manages to somehow refrain from being exploitative itself. 
 
Shot handsomely by Iranian cinematographer Amir Mokri, best known for his work with Michael Bay, the film captures the rugged city terrain and alleyways with a near-stagey artifice, reminding viewers of the film’s theatrical stage play roots.  Amazingly the film garnered the compositional talents of John Woo’s Hard Boiled composer Michael Gibbs who offers up a serviceable synthesized score augmenting the dialogue driven proceedings.  Theresa Russell’s energetic, impassioned and somewhat sleazy performance doesn’t quite climb the walls like she did with Bad Timing but nevertheless makes this resourceful bad girl someone we invariably empathize with over the course of the movie.  With her expressive face, her deliberately clunky delivery and foul-mouthed abandon, Russell makes Liz into a hot mess with a mountain of baggage and dirty laundry to air out.

 
Though less showy than typical Ken Russell who himself cameos in the piece alongside former porn star Ginger Lynn Allen, Danny Trejo and even David Lynch regular Jack Nance, Whore by title and rating invariably found itself crippled by the curse of the NC-17 rating.  While a heavily edited version of the film in R rated form was released at chains like Blockbuster Video, few viewers actually got to see the film in its original theatrical release.  Despite tanking at the box office and garnering middling reviews from critics who almost always get their backs up around Ken Russell, Whore enjoyed enough of a cult following through viral videos and revival screenings that eventually the good folks at Australian based blu-ray boutique label Imprint have finally granted this long sought-after Russell gem a home video release after years of languishing on tape and laserdisc.

 
Not necessarily the starting point for uninitiated Ken Russell viewers who will go in expecting raunch and come away underwhelmed by the film’s straightforwardness, Whore is perhaps the last time we saw a major film from the late British master.  Afterwards, Russell moved into making films for television again, reuniting with the BBC before eventually going on to make films in his own estate grounds’ backyard.  Though Whore is far beneath what the grandmaster was truly capable of, his 1971 film The Devils ascending to untold artistic heights, it nevertheless remains the last time the director’s impish provocative personality was in full widescreen 35mm bloom and Imprint have given this film a truly loving treatment replete with newly filmed as well as archival extras.  The title isn’t necessarily sayable yet Whore remains a forthright example of how one film can generate a sharp fanged riposte in the form of another film full of snark as well as sincerity.  A good final theatrical bow from arguably Britain’s greatest and perhaps most brazen filmmaker.

--Andrew Kotwicki