HOOKERS ON DAVIE STREET is a Canadian documentary feature from 1984 that comes across as one of the grittiest I've ever seen. There's no framing finesse here, no stylistics or the like, just a series of interview snippets with various prostitutes, male, female, and transsexual, working the above-named street in Vancouver in the early 1980s.
Unsurprisingly enough it's a grubby thing indeed and the lives depicted are rather squalid. It brings to mind the inherent vice of a film like TAXI DRIVER, although this time it's all real. The good news is that the interviews are unstaged and heartfelt, so much so that you feel like you really get an insight into the lives of these sex workers and what they have to put up with on a daily basis. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that they don't come across as emotionless sex robots at all but rather real, flawed human beings complete with their own foibles and quirks.
Unsurprisingly enough it's a grubby thing indeed and the lives depicted are rather squalid. It brings to mind the inherent vice of a film like TAXI DRIVER, although this time it's all real. The good news is that the interviews are unstaged and heartfelt, so much so that you feel like you really get an insight into the lives of these sex workers and what they have to put up with on a daily basis. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that they don't come across as emotionless sex robots at all but rather real, flawed human beings complete with their own foibles and quirks.