The Receptionist (18.)
Directed by Jenny Lu.
Starring Teresa Daley, Sophie Gopsill, Shiang-chyi Chen, Amanda Fan, Josh Whitehouse and Stephen Pucci. 102 mins.
There's not a single shaft of light in this tale of an educated Taiwanese immigrant who ends up working front of house in an illegal massage parlour. The curtains are always pulled tightly closed to try and make sure their neighbours on a suburban London street don't know what is going on in this house of Asian ladies and because it is a tale of perfect misery, where everybody and everything is degraded by the need for money. Tina (Daley) may be a graduate in literature and have an English boyfriend, struggling to make it as an architect, but that doesn't mean anything, she's just more meat for the grinder. Everything around her is demanding that she hardens her heart so she can function more efficiently in the marketplace.
It is a mercilessly bleak view of the sex trade, but then it's a mercilessly bleak view of everything. It's one of those films that you wonder if you really need to be putting yourself through this. But ultimately there is just enough humanity to make it bearable and rewarding.
Most of the film takes place in the confines of the terraced house, a strange little enclave in the middle of a London suburb. England for the English is generally reckoned to be some kind of bellicose roar of defiance, but it can just as easily be twisted into an insult: England for the English, it isn't fit for humans now. From their view from within it seems like the English are a race of thugs and sex deviants transported around in white vans. Something of a stereotype, though we might be flattering ourselves to the degree of how far.
There is a xenophobic streak in the film. Its conclusion is that people best belong in their own countries and we should stick to our own land and our own kind.
Directed by Jenny Lu.
Starring Teresa Daley, Sophie Gopsill, Shiang-chyi Chen, Amanda Fan, Josh Whitehouse and Stephen Pucci. 102 mins.
There's not a single shaft of light in this tale of an educated Taiwanese immigrant who ends up working front of house in an illegal massage parlour. The curtains are always pulled tightly closed to try and make sure their neighbours on a suburban London street don't know what is going on in this house of Asian ladies and because it is a tale of perfect misery, where everybody and everything is degraded by the need for money. Tina (Daley) may be a graduate in literature and have an English boyfriend, struggling to make it as an architect, but that doesn't mean anything, she's just more meat for the grinder. Everything around her is demanding that she hardens her heart so she can function more efficiently in the marketplace.
It is a mercilessly bleak view of the sex trade, but then it's a mercilessly bleak view of everything. It's one of those films that you wonder if you really need to be putting yourself through this. But ultimately there is just enough humanity to make it bearable and rewarding.
Most of the film takes place in the confines of the terraced house, a strange little enclave in the middle of a London suburb. England for the English is generally reckoned to be some kind of bellicose roar of defiance, but it can just as easily be twisted into an insult: England for the English, it isn't fit for humans now. From their view from within it seems like the English are a race of thugs and sex deviants transported around in white vans. Something of a stereotype, though we might be flattering ourselves to the degree of how far.
There is a xenophobic streak in the film. Its conclusion is that people best belong in their own countries and we should stick to our own land and our own kind.
