There are real evils in this world to be exposed, including genuine sex slavery and pedophilia rings. Those films take courage to make.
Here, these filmmakers' self-professed "expose" of brothel run by an illegal alien and staffed by illegal aliens is hardly what it claims to be. While the madame is boorish, she is hardly exploitive. At no time did she abuse, punish or confine any of the working girls. In fact, all the girls were working of their own volition to make more money than they could as in some other capacity without immigration papers. None were "enslaved" at the brothel.
The real story here is how the filmmakers take a non-story and attempt to spin it as an expose of something sordid, which it is not.
A few points:
* The undercover "reporter" Hsiao-Hung Pai is excessively dramatic claiming that she was terribly abused by the madame while working as a maid and cook at the brothel. It may have actually been that the madame was legitimately not satisfied with her work, or that Hsiao-Hung was genuinely annoying (she comes off a bit dense as she baits people to talk more into her spy glasses). After all, instead of doing the job she was hired to do, she is more focused on filming the brothel under false pretenses, worrying about recharging her spy glasses or coming up with excuses to run out and pick up another pair of spy glasses, angling for as much "chatting" time with the madame in order to get some juicy tidbits, or hiding in the bathroom. Can you blame the madame who hired her for being annoyed?
So the madame said some not very nice things to the maid ... that doesn't constitute exploitation or a crime or sex trafficking. There is one scene, intended I suppose to be dramatic, where the madame asked the undercover reporter to give her a head massage, and God Almighty, her hair was greasy. What sadistic abuse she endured! At the end of the film, Hsiao-Hung feels "compelled" to confront the madame ... for what? To tell her that she was mean to her? Get real.
* The subtitles of the Chinese spoken by the madame were deceptive. It shows her repeatedly calling people "c*nt", but that is simply not the case. In one instance, what the madame said was "you are weird" in Chinese , and it was translated as "you c*nt". That is not only wrong to mislead the audience in such a way, it is UNETHICAL.
* Hsiao-Hung makes a big stink about how all the guilt talk about "the need for an immigrant to make more money for ones family" was getting to her, and she verges on an emotional breakdown. Is this a documentary about sex trafficking (no), sex exploitation (nope), sex slavery (not) or the filmmaker's own emotional problems? Probably the latter. In the end, what is most grating is the emotive, self-indulgent, over- dramatizations of the filmmakers' own emotional issues. This really is all too typical of BAD documentary filmmaking, when the filmmaker has nothing interesting to observe, so they have to observe (and overplay) their own emotional reactions to what was going on. BORING and BAD filmmaking.
Moreover, the madame (and all the other working girls) are really just minding their own business, trying to make money for their families. The filmmakers, on the other hand, intrude on their lives duplicitously, ruin their livelihood, and then confront the madame to condemn her in an shrilling and overbearing manner, literally cornering the madame so that she had to call her boyfriend to escape. So who commits the only crime with a victim in this film (assault and false imprisonment?). And who here really comes off as the more sympathetic in the end? In my view, not as the filmmakers probably imagine.
The only potentially controversial issue is the fact that the madame encouraged the girls to not use condoms, but this was not forced either and occurred more out of naivete.
Look, I have no problem with documentary filmmaking on mundane topics. The filmmaker could have taken this film a different direction, making a sympathetic portrayal of the struggle of illegal immigrants etc. But instead, they chose to portray the situation as "exploitation" and they themselves as "investigative journalists", when it wasn't and they definitely were not. The only exploitation being committed in this film was by the filmmakers. If they really had courage, they would be exposing real sex crimes, but they didn't. If they had real sympathy, they wouldn't have crassly exposed all the women in the film the way they did (and it is still a mystery why some girls faces were obscured but most weren't ... favoritism? vengeance? who knows?) and manipulated the story in unethical ways. This film is a cheap and deceptive cop out.
Here, these filmmakers' self-professed "expose" of brothel run by an illegal alien and staffed by illegal aliens is hardly what it claims to be. While the madame is boorish, she is hardly exploitive. At no time did she abuse, punish or confine any of the working girls. In fact, all the girls were working of their own volition to make more money than they could as in some other capacity without immigration papers. None were "enslaved" at the brothel.
The real story here is how the filmmakers take a non-story and attempt to spin it as an expose of something sordid, which it is not.
A few points:
* The undercover "reporter" Hsiao-Hung Pai is excessively dramatic claiming that she was terribly abused by the madame while working as a maid and cook at the brothel. It may have actually been that the madame was legitimately not satisfied with her work, or that Hsiao-Hung was genuinely annoying (she comes off a bit dense as she baits people to talk more into her spy glasses). After all, instead of doing the job she was hired to do, she is more focused on filming the brothel under false pretenses, worrying about recharging her spy glasses or coming up with excuses to run out and pick up another pair of spy glasses, angling for as much "chatting" time with the madame in order to get some juicy tidbits, or hiding in the bathroom. Can you blame the madame who hired her for being annoyed?
So the madame said some not very nice things to the maid ... that doesn't constitute exploitation or a crime or sex trafficking. There is one scene, intended I suppose to be dramatic, where the madame asked the undercover reporter to give her a head massage, and God Almighty, her hair was greasy. What sadistic abuse she endured! At the end of the film, Hsiao-Hung feels "compelled" to confront the madame ... for what? To tell her that she was mean to her? Get real.
* The subtitles of the Chinese spoken by the madame were deceptive. It shows her repeatedly calling people "c*nt", but that is simply not the case. In one instance, what the madame said was "you are weird" in Chinese , and it was translated as "you c*nt". That is not only wrong to mislead the audience in such a way, it is UNETHICAL.
* Hsiao-Hung makes a big stink about how all the guilt talk about "the need for an immigrant to make more money for ones family" was getting to her, and she verges on an emotional breakdown. Is this a documentary about sex trafficking (no), sex exploitation (nope), sex slavery (not) or the filmmaker's own emotional problems? Probably the latter. In the end, what is most grating is the emotive, self-indulgent, over- dramatizations of the filmmakers' own emotional issues. This really is all too typical of BAD documentary filmmaking, when the filmmaker has nothing interesting to observe, so they have to observe (and overplay) their own emotional reactions to what was going on. BORING and BAD filmmaking.
Moreover, the madame (and all the other working girls) are really just minding their own business, trying to make money for their families. The filmmakers, on the other hand, intrude on their lives duplicitously, ruin their livelihood, and then confront the madame to condemn her in an shrilling and overbearing manner, literally cornering the madame so that she had to call her boyfriend to escape. So who commits the only crime with a victim in this film (assault and false imprisonment?). And who here really comes off as the more sympathetic in the end? In my view, not as the filmmakers probably imagine.
The only potentially controversial issue is the fact that the madame encouraged the girls to not use condoms, but this was not forced either and occurred more out of naivete.
Look, I have no problem with documentary filmmaking on mundane topics. The filmmaker could have taken this film a different direction, making a sympathetic portrayal of the struggle of illegal immigrants etc. But instead, they chose to portray the situation as "exploitation" and they themselves as "investigative journalists", when it wasn't and they definitely were not. The only exploitation being committed in this film was by the filmmakers. If they really had courage, they would be exposing real sex crimes, but they didn't. If they had real sympathy, they wouldn't have crassly exposed all the women in the film the way they did (and it is still a mystery why some girls faces were obscured but most weren't ... favoritism? vengeance? who knows?) and manipulated the story in unethical ways. This film is a cheap and deceptive cop out.