Sex: My British Job (2013) User Reviews

Exploitative and deceitful filmmaking example

[vz909 · 1/10 · 2 December 2014]

Nothing of value is offered by this documentary. In fact it's not even about a narrator who does sex as her job like the title would suggest, it's a housemaid working and observing brothels from a distance, and as such, the film remains skin-deep and devoid of any insight or revelation.

We've all seen the same girls whining and bickering about money and being illegal immigrants on countless other docu films. The preyed upon turned to preying on others, what's there to see? What really bothers me about this film is their way of deceitful filming method of spying on unsuspecting "participants" and then later on selling the whole thing as a film for profit. This is not investigative exploration, it's exploitation on the same level as the way these brothel owners treat their fellow girls (if they don't have legal status then they can't do anything or complain about the filming right?). The undercover lady eventually got extremely bitter about the way she's treated by the owner and went as far as not to mask the owners identity (and even her unflattering naked old body) in the final cut, most likely as a way to "expose" her... very professional indeed. The English subtitle also distorts the owners words in a very negative light when the original spoken dialog weren't that harsh.

This is one fine example on how to do a meaningless and exploitative film with micro budget. A total waste of time.

Excellent Documentary

[AtRise2020 · 10/10 · 13 December 2013]

Great work by Hsiao-Hung Pai and Nick Broomfield in their investigation into the exploitation of Chinese and other immigrants. This is not about Miss Kitty working the saloon on Gunsmoke. No romantic view here, just the ugly face of reality in a brothel run by vipers and scum, possibly themselves exploited and abused at one time and have themselves sunk to even lower depths than the women they exploit.

Well, worth the watch. The film is suspenseful, sad and interesting at the same time. The film moves by real drama. It was much better than I expected, better than many of the other documentaries on the subject of prostitution.

Just Rubbish ...

[lukang72 · 1/10 · 18 January 2016]

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.

A deeply immoral film

[ersbel · 12 August 2017]

This is a deeply immoral film. Starting with Nick Broomfield showing up on the poster promoting the movie just because he is the white guy. While everybody in this movie seems to be risking something, Nick Broomfield risked getting bored to death while doing Sudoku and waiting for the woman who did all the work. Sure, he did the so called directing. Which in this case is only an over important way of saying junior editor.

Everybody there is working. The women take the risks. And the job is also unpleasant and without glory. Nobody seems to be aggressive. There is no violence. Even Hsiao Hung Pai who did all the work does not mention anything worse than harsh talk, but not insulting. And I made aware by different comments that the old white male felt the need to spice up the translation to turn it from harsh to insulting.

Exploitation? Sure. By so many. Husbands and families back home. The teachers of a failed schooling system back home. Border officials. Immigration. All these people posing as nice in their own communities. Each and every one of them is pushing these girls into not using condoms, into accepting the demands of the clients. Working on the black market in some restaurant can be worse for less money. But Nick Broomfield does not care about that. He acts like a pimp by pushing the woman into this reporting job than he talks about making her quit.

And what is the result? What kind of dim wit one has to be to think anything from this will ever help the women? At best, the police will come and everybody from the owner of the flat to the last sex worker will have to suffer and lose income. The women will even be sent home before even making enough money to pay the smugglers' debt. So life will be bad for them. Now, with the Internet, everybody might find out what they did in the UK. And that probably will give them a high paying job an a honorary PhD at some university in China, right? And when they are going to be sent home who is going to be paying? It's not Nick Broomfield or the Chief of Police with his talks about "fighting" the crime. No. It will be the taxpayer. The taxpayer who was not hurt.

Also it is worth noting that the team is not using "the latest" in investigative technology. The team uses the latest on Ebay. Which, the irony! is probably designed and maid in China. Thus reinforcing the working conditions in China for the task of "informing" the people and feeding the reporting ****. For his part of work Nick Broomfield is quick to express his incompetence in using the so called latest tech. And blame the low quality on the hardware and not his lack of skill.

Contact me with Questions, Comments or Suggestions ryitfork @ bitmail.ch

Explotation at its finest

[isadoravalenzuelafierro · 1/10 · 2 June 2018]

The white guy exploited the journalist, she did all the work while he wasn't taking any risks. This so called documentary has no ethics at all. People were filmed without their consent, just for the sake of entertainment and profit. I'm disgusted by this.