film

Working Girls is one of the two early films (the other being Born In Flames) for which the American radical feminist filmmaker Lizzie Borden is best known. Working Girls came three years after Born In Flames, in 1986, and where its predecessor created a near-future socialist America as it setting, Working Girls takes a social-realist approach, taking us through a day in a relatively high-class Manhattan brothel, in a similar quasi-documentary style as worked so well in Born In Flames.

Matter-of-fact and completely free of judgment or sensationalism, the film follows Molly, a well-educated photographer who works shifts as a prostitute to support her creative pursuits. Rather than depicting the work as glamorous or tragic, Borden focuses on the rhythms, negotiations and interpersonal dynamics that structure a typical day. At heart it's a brilliantly observed and sharply scripted portrait of women's labour, with many aspects that are as routine as those in any office job despite the unusual and sometimes intense setting.