MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Whore’: A Feeble Slice of Unreality

Just because “Whore” is a heroically tedious motion picture doesn’t mean there aren’t things that can be learned from it. For instance:

Don’t try to whip someone in a bathroom. You might break a fixture.

* Never get in a strange van. You never know what kind of sociopath might be lurking behind the curtain.

* Prostitutes do not have a lot of fun. In fact, they do not have any fun at all.

While this last point may not exactly sound like news, it is being passed off as such by director and co-screenwriter Ken Russell, a man who is much more adept at creating a fuss than making a decent film.

When, in one of the movie industry Classification & Ratings Administration’s more understandable decisions, “Whore” (selected theaters) was rated NC-17, out of bounds for children younger than 17, Russell did some very public and self-satisfied bleating about how his film “illustrates reality.” This from a director none of whose previous work (except for his fine adaptations of D. H. Lawrence in “Women in Love” and “The Rainbow”) has put so much as a frame of realism up on the screen.

Matching Russell in the unreality sweepstakes is his star, Theresa Russell, who plays Liz, the demimondaine of the title. Dressed in short leather skirt, silver halter, a red leopard-skin jacket and a perpetually pouty look, Russell certainly looks the part as she wanders the deserted streets of an uncredited downtown L.A., selling herself for a basic $50.

Given that it’s a slow night, Liz has plenty of time to share with us, in voice-over and straight monologue, the tricks of her trade, so to speak. She complains of the stupidity of her customers, their reluctance to use condoms, their infernal need to be told that they’re the best she’s ever had. We see, in a series of unrelievedly dreary flashbacks, the guy who liked to suck on her shoe, the oldster who was into bondage, even her washout of an ex-husband.

For Liz, we are made to understand, wasn’t always like this. She’s had a very tough life. Married young to a guy who looked like a Calvin Klein ad, she turns to sex for money to pay the bills. Soon, she finds herself so abused by her generally loutish customers that she opts for the protection of a pimp, who--another one of Russell’s bursts of groundbreaking realism--doesn’t really like her or even treat her very well. Talk about shocking.

Whiny and unconvincing, Russell turns in a performance that is game but dismal. Granted that the script (co-written with Deborah Dalton from a play by David Hines) doesn’t give her much to work with. Granted too that her years of making equally strung-out films with her husband, director Nicholas Roeg, have apparently taught her that being plucky is everything. Still, listening to her rattle on and on for an hour and a half is very much of a chore.

As for Mr. Russell, no one who has waded through everything from “Crimes of Passion” to “The Lair of the White Worm” will be surprised at the wretched excess he delights in. Every cliche situation imaginable, even a scene of a teary-eyed Liz hiding a la Stella Dallas outside her young son’s school to catch a clandestine glance of his happiness, is dragged in out of the cold. And, rather obtusely for a film that has been trumpeting itself as a moral light in the wilderness, Russell packs in gratuitous and exploitative nudity with a vengeance.

The worst thing about “Whore,” however, is not how feeble it is, for bad films come and very quickly go, but the pathetically venal way in which its creators have exploited the problem of prostitution and its glorification in the media. Even in a business where immorality is not only tolerated but glorified, those trying to sanctify “Whore” as an antidote to illusion should be mightily and thoroughly ashamed.

‘Whore’

Theresa Russell: Liz

Benjamin Mouton: Blake

Antonio Fargas: Rasta

Sanjay: Indian

A Trimark Pictures Release. Director Ken Russell. Producers Dan Ireland, Ronaldo Vasconcellos. Executive producer Mark Amin. Screenplay by Ken Russell and Deborah Dalton, based on a play by David Hines. Cinematographer Amir Mokri. Editor Brian Tagg. Costumes Leonard Pollack. Music Michael Gibbs. Production design Richard Lewis. Art director Naomi Shohan. Set decorator Amy Wells. Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes.

MPAA-rated NC-17.