Customer Reviews

The Life

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

Deceptive package. The amount of time spent by the two female leads onscreen is basically an afterthought. Way too much time is spent interviewing real hookers/pimps/gigilos. Can you say boring?! There are also issues with the captioning/subtitles way out of sync with the film. Low tech 2ch sound, grainy picture. It is worth watching to see Denise Richards get 'doggied', although way too briefly. For rental only by hard core fans of Richards and Hannah.

This film looks like a botched rough cut. Given the material they had, what might have emerged from this footage is probably an unflinching documentary which examines "the life" in prostitution. Instead, what we have is about one short film's worth of fictitious narrative-film footage, shot with big-name actors and proper production values, intercut with narratively befuddled interviews that don't build towards anything, and some of the worst "special effects" I've ever seen on a commercially available DVD product.

Director Luna (Maria Lidon)'s "post-modern techniques" are the main thing that screwed this film up. The film is so busy throwing transitions, still photographs and random imagery at you that it forgets to draw you in. Editing decisions appear to have been made based on what might look cool visually instead of what's engaging dramatically. And Lord knows why Daryl Hannah (who made a blazing comeback in the Kill Bill films), the terrific Joaquim de Almeida, and mainstream star Denise Richards agreed to be in this crap -- it looks like the producers ran out of money a quarter of the way through production and tried to patch it up with "verite" documentary footage shot on the cheap and bad, low-grade stills and videography effects.

Most grievously, the narrative footage and the documentary footage don't connect. The only way this intercutting style could work is if the two halves are relatively balanced in proportion (think of the voice-over segments and the story segments in the first two thirds of Memento), and if each half is directly relevant to the other. But the documentary segments in The Life are narratively aimless, and fail to really establish the characters of the prostitutes, gigolos and madams who populate them. And the fictional segments added together form a completely generic girl-turned-prostitute story that hits all the tired story marks, with nary a unique dramatic moment in sight. Two bad films edited together do not make a good one...in fact, The Life feels like one and a half bad films. The documentary segment alone, if properly put together, might have been interesting (provided you kill those cheesy effects), and the narrative segments might have formed an acceptable if unremarkable short narrative film. Instead, together, each only serves to deepen the other's stink.

If you want a story about the sex industry, try This Girl's Life, which was a relatively sensitive, engaging look at an internet porn star, with fine acting moments from Juliette Marquis, James Woods and Michael Rapaport. The Life, on the other hand, is a pointless exercise in post-modern b.s. videography and editing which tries to show off its hipness but ends up flushing its own potential assets down the toilet.

I only gave this movie 1 star becasue I wasn't able to give it zero (0) stars. Fans of Denise Richards and/or Darryl Hannah will be disappointed. Reading the plot you think it's a twist on Wild Things. Basically it's a documentary talking to prostitutes. Richards and Hanna are in the movie for about 5 minutes total screen time. Pick yourself something else to watch.

I have been a sex worker for ten years and much like Denie Richards character in the film, I started working and took on "The Life" as a way to pay my way through my education.

I now have a degree in journalism and have published many stories on the topic of sex work.

Although I don't think that "The Life", or "Puta" as it was originally called in Spain, works very well as a film - i can honestly say that it is a realistic representation of the many facets of the sex industry. Although the overall feel of the film seems nostalgically warm towards the industry, it shows both the good, the bad and the ugly sides of this generally misunderstood career choice.

If you are hoping for a sexy movie starring hollywood starlets Denise Richards and Daryl Hannah - don't bother with this title.

However, if you are interested in the mysterious world of the oldest profession - perhaps you are thinking about a career change or maybe like the main character in the movie, you are simply studying the sex trade at college - i think you will enjoy this film and find it honest and insightful.

Persons looking for gratuitous titillation from bombshells Denise Richards or Daryl Hannah will be disappointed. Those looking for a story line will similarly be disappointed. In fact, anyone seeking any entertainment at all will not find much of worth in here. All is not lost, though. Persons looking for short interviews from people in the sex industry might find something of interest.

Ostensibly, this is the story of two women. Denise Richards plays a doctoral student who trying to get through school. Daryl Hannah plays an older woman in her apartment building with no visible means of support. When Richards has a hard time making her rent payments, she asks Hannah how she pays the bills. Her answer is simple. She's a hooker and she offers to help Richards into the business. She does with mixed results. That's virtually the entire story line but I would be surprised if it is even a quarter of the film.

Most of the film is taken up with short interviews of people in the sex business. Some are truck stop hookers; some are high priced call girls. Some are pimps and madams. Some are customers. Few of them speak English and the interviews are subtitled. There seems to be some unity of theme with the interviews. Similar questions are asked of various people within the same segment. These segments have nothing to do with the story line. They are merely interspersed throughout.

Its all kind of sad. One gets the impression that a truly fascinating documentary could have been made. One also suspects that a really fine movie could have been made. This is neither.

The Life has been a wildly misrepresented movie. The cover of the DVD shows Denise Richards and Daryll Hannah languidly posing, arms draped over one another; so one would expect a film that is largely a fictional narrative, but instead, the film is mostly a collection of interviews from prostitutes of every imaginable variety from Spain, France and Eastern Europe. They range the gamut from the sleaziest of streetwalkers, to male hookers, and on to the most up-market of call girls.

While the interviews themselves are quite fun and enlightening, the movie doesn't really work as well as it could, because the scripted drama gets in the way. The Life certainly isn't as bad as some other reviewers have pointed out, but the idea of combining fictional narrative with documentary techniques (probably to sell in the American market) definitely wasn't the right approach to take. The film probably would have worked just as well as a straight documentary.

Denise Richards stars in the fictional portion of the film as a young woman living in Los Angeles and studying anthropology in graduate school. She's doing a study on prostitution, which leads her to conduct a variety of information gathering conversations with real life hookers. These sessions are presented in the film as part of her research, even though confusingly, Richards never appears onscreen with any of the interviewees.

When pressured by financial worries, her prostitute neighbor (Daryll Hannah) suggests that Richards sell her body for cash. She's at first hesitant to do so, having had an awkward experience with an Arab businessman, but soon she plucks up the courage, realizing that if her neighbor can do it, she can too. The film is book ended by a scene where she interviews for a photography shoot, but the interview conducted by an adult film producer, is really just an excuse to coerce her into the business.

The interviews with the real-life prostitutes and their pimps are by far the most interesting part of the film. They are indeed an eclectic bunch, ranging from street hookers who have been physically abused, upscale French call girls, adult film directors, porn stars, sadomasochists, and most interestingly, the sexual proclivities of the men (and women) who are willing to pay for it all. Their confessional is vast and wide-ranging; covering such subjects their sexual limits, their attitude towards money, their attitude towards men, and also their eventual hopes and dreams.

There are also lots of racy stories that provide a few laughs: One of the hunky male escorts discloses an interesting tidbit involving a client, his police costume and his Billy club. There's also another black, gorgeously nubile Ghanaian woman who boasts, quite unashamedly, that she likes to be splattered all over with male bodily fluids. She also likes to keep up her technique by practicing on a banana. She's obviously proud of what she does and readily admits that she wants to be the world's greatest super-hooker.

The Life would have been far more powerful if it had discarded the unnecessary storyline featuring Richards and Hannah and had taken the real life interviews and shaped them into a more cohesive and solid documentary. The fictional story has the unsettling and disquieting effect of glamorizing and sensationalizing a profession that is unfortunately far from glamorous. The end result is a film that a strange mixture of sexual chic and that ultimately trivializes and denigrates the sex business. This is a serious, important subject that demands a much more cutting edge and focused treatment than a movie like The Life is willing to give. Mike Leonard April 05.

First off, this isn't a showcase for Daryl or Denise (although they are great in their parts) but it is a showcase for prostitutes and does a good job of providing insight into their lives. Both male and female prostitutes are shown, just to be fair, as well as their customers. That said, the scenes with Denise and Daryl are worth the price of the DVD. Denise Richards is sexy enough in a still photo and sexier still in her scene with the a film producer. Don't expect to see Daryl or Denise in the nude. It doesn't happen. There is plenty of nudity though. The DVD is technically well done also. See it if you like documentaries and want to learn a bit about the seamier side of life.

My objection was the implication that the "stars" played a part in the film. I felt that the picture was completely deceptive. Ms Richards and Ms Hanna had less than 15 minutes (maybe a little more but not much and possible even less) and were clearly there to fool the viewer. It was an interesting documentary about prostitution and it might have been an interesting and revealing film if the the stars had been left out and it was done only as a documentary.

This documentary style film on prostitutes suffers in so many areas, that the 87 mins seemed elongated and I have totally lost my interest in it after 30 mins. It's a big question when it comes to seeing that both Denise Richards and Daryl Hannah had just about 10 mins of screen time and their roles are insignificant. Daryl Hannah was much more enjoyable in Dancing at The Blue Iguana a few years ago. Granted that her career has gone downhill, but doing this kind of film, is just pure bad publicity. The editing of the interviews is overwhelmingly inconsistent along with aweful soundtrack. It's bad for the eyes and ears. They should've just deleted Hannah and Richard's roles and focus on all documentary. The only thing that is worthwhile is that the non-actors(real prostitutes male and females) do provide their share of their experiences and feelings about their lives as prostitutes. Now why the heck was there no North American prostitutes interviewed, and just mostly Spanish, and some French, and one Japanese? They were talking so fast that it's hard to catch up reading the subtitles throughout the film.

Realize that the G-rated Hannah-Richards storyline involving the friendship of an anthropology student with a prostitute is very short...maybe 20 minutes of the film. Intercut are numerous bits from a series of actual interviews of prostitutes of all types, a few madams, a dominatrix and a couple porn film performers, as well as some clients, a couple porn photographers, and a cold-eyed young Eastern European sex-slaver. The link between the two disparate elements of the film appears to be Richards' character's ongoing interviews for a book on prositution she's doing and, under Hannah's tutelage, a first-hand foray into prostitution when her grant money runs out. As far as I can tell after one viewing, no effort is made to explain why the interviews are done, for the most part, in subtitled Spanish, obviously shot in Europe. Without knowing the background, it appears to me the producers tried to market what would have been a routine documentary with a fictional storyline and some star appeal, whether or not it was taken from a book. If true, it is an interesting marketing ploy. The storyline is disappointing, the interviews good, and the whole treatment was unexpected.