Alice (Joi Itapson) is a down-on-her-luck streetwalking prostitute who,
still in her early 20s, has seen more of life than she ought to, and has
grown disillusioned by her profession (even if it stands to question
whether she ever actually had any illusions). Even the johns who mean
relatively well with her piss her off to no end, as does the fact that
despite all her hard and dirty work, her money hardly buys her more than
the necessities. She contemplates suicide time and again, but her
daughter, who she hardly ever sees, being out on the streets all day and
night, keeps her from doing something drastic. But she knows,
streetwalking on one's own is dangerous business, and every car she gets
into she might not get out of alive ... Alice is a
compelling short drama that moves things at a deliberately slow pace (as
is often the case with filmmaker Douglas Reese's films) but lives through
its rather impressive imagery, the bleakness of its scenes(even and
especially when they are of a rather trivial, mundane nature), a rather
powerful central performance, and also the refusal to ultimately pass judgment one way or the other. Now be warned, this is not a film to lift
your spirit, as it wasn't planned to be - it's just a pretty powerful
featurette which you will enjoy in the right state of mind.
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