Netflix Picks: Two Tales Of Prostitution

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Sex work often seems mysterious, but there's no reason it has to be. Sex workers are regular ol' people and they probably feel the same way about their job that you do about yours: blah. So today we're taking a gander at a couple of film that present prostitution as frankly as possible (but still include some hot naughty bits as well).

1. Working Girls: This is a 1986 film written, directed, and produced by Lizzie Borden (not the pornstar/director) about a day in the lives of a few women working in an upscale Manhattan brothel. While she was working on the script, Borden spent a lot of time with members of COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), an organization of current and former prostitutes who lobby on behalf of the profession and its practitioners, and so this pseudo-documentary ends up showing you the mundane, the manipulative, and the marvelous facets of selling sex without trying to put a moral spin on it. Mostly, the women who work in this brothel seem bored, especially the main character, Molly (Louise Smith) who has a degree from Yale and a lesbian lover. The MPAA only tried to come down on one scene in the film, the one in which Molly inserts her diaphragm, but they let it stay in the end, and so we now have a film with naughty bits at 5:00, 10:00, 17:00, 32:00, 1:02:00, 1:08:00, and 1:18:00.

2. X: Hanna Mangan Lawrence (who played Seppia on "Spartacus: Vengance") plays a young woman attempting to sell her body for the first time, and Viva Bianca (also of "Spartacus" fame) plays a jaded escort who only has one last night of work before she calls it quits. These two ladies get called together for a threesome, and all goes as planned until the john gets killed in a shady drug deal and the prosties have to fend for themselves as they try to escape the murderer. "X" plays into the mythology of prostitution as part of a large criminal underground filled with evil thugs and sadistic sex, but it never glorifies the violence that it displays. Viva and Hanna endure a great deal of hardship, and they process it in different ways, but they keep moving. Is this film uncomfortable? You bet it is, but it's good for you, and besides, we could all use a little more quality time with these actresses. Speaking of time, look for nudity at 7:00, 10:30, 24:50, 31:25, and 32:00.

[At top: Hanna Mangan Lawrence in "X" (movies.netflix.com)]

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