In Sarah Jones’s engaging film about the sex trade, everyone has a say.
If you’re hoping to land squarely on an “aye” or a “nay” about the sex-work industry, Sarah Jones’s documentary-narrative feature, “Sell/Buy/Date,” won’t help. And that’s a good thing.
Jones — who wrote, directed and stars in the film — doesn’t treat the tensions between exploitation and empowerment, personal agency and systemic cruelties, as binaries. Instead, they are riveting, confounding and, as exchanges between Jones and her mother attest, personal. Why Jones travels with her deceased sister’s journal factors in mightily, too.
In 2016, Jones’s solo show of the same name became an Off Broadway hit. Yet the announcement that she’d be turning it into a movie was met with a barrage of criticism on social media — much of it from sex workers who wanted ownership of their stories. (Laverne Cox pulled out as an executive producer; Meryl Streep stayed on.)
Instead of scrapping the project, Jones embraced that blistering chapter, inviting sex-work activists more fully into her fraught and comedic reckoning. Among them: the adult-film actress Lotus Lain; the pole-dance instructor Amy Bond; the courtesan Alice Little of Nevada’s Chicken Ranch brothel; and Evan Seinfeld, the founder of the adult social platform IsMyGirl.
On her quest, Jones checks in with some friends — Rosario Dawson, Ilana Glazer and Bryan Cranston, among them. She also brings along four of her characters, which she plays herself: bubbe Lorraine; Bella, a sex-work studies major; Rashid, an Uber driver; and Nereida, a women’s rights advocate. The quartet provide comic relief, and more.
After Jones’s pleasant tour of Chicken Ranch, Nereida insists she meet Esperanza Fonseca, an anti-trafficking activist who addresses the knotty issue of agency, showing Jones around a Las Vegas hotel room where opulence often masks violence. As the model Terria Xo says, “It’s not a choice if you have to do it to survive.”
Sell/Buy/Date
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
