Hustlers doesn’t begin as a first person narrative. In fact it starts out in a direction not unlike Soderbergh’s Magic Mike, whereby a young, somewhat inexperienced stripper Dorothy (Constance Wu), new to a hot New York club, is taken under the wing of the popular veteran Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) to learn the ropes and techniques necessary to succeed in the business. But that was 2007, and when the film first cuts to Dorothy talking to a reporter (Julia Stiles) seven years later, we see the change in her personality palpably. It reminds me a lot of I, Tonya and not much at all of Goodfellas where Ray Liotta began and ended his story essentially the same person. Christy Lemire called this film “Goodfellas in a G-string” and she’s not wrong, but where the 1990 Scorsese mafia film chose to focus on the brutality, the thuggishness, and general unpleasantness of its characters (rightfully so of course), Hustlers openly walks the tightrope on the righteousness of its characters’ crimes while exploring their relationships and what it means for them to be in control.
It’s a true story based on a 2015 New York magazine article by Jessica Pressler detailing how a crew of strippers built a fortune off of an organized robbery scheme that involved drugging and maxing out the credit cards of wealthy male clients. The adaptation is written and directed by Lorene Scafaria, starkly different in sensibility and style from the romantic comedies she’s known for. And yet the film does have an undercurrent of humour, and some really funny moments. Scafaria’s priority however is to the authenticity of her characters and their situation, starting with dispelling any preconceptions or prejudices one may have towards strippers and their work. Far from being merely the classic depraved den of titillation where neither the clientèle nor the dancers are deserving of respect, Hustlers shows the business side, the technical side (it requires fitness and acrobatics), and the emotional side. A dancer gossips about her boyfriend, jealous that her body isn’t his; the movie addresses the sexual harassment strippers frequently endure from men who expect them to be prostitutes, and the discrimination they face after leaving the job -in one scene following the 2008 financial crisis, Dorothy has to lie on her application for a basic retail job. It’s against this reality and the sympathy it engenders that we can accept the hustling.
But make no mistake, these aren’t fallen women having to resort to a degrading job. On the contrary they’re incredibly powerful, self-confident, independent women -both Dorothy and Ramona are single mothers. And their cunning is what allows them to succeed. I think that’s why the movie is most reminiscent of gangster films -not for its standard crime saga trajectory or it’s stylistic choices (Scafaria is a fan of long takes, dramatic slow motion and whip pans), but for its characters’ knowledge of the system and fragile masculinity being the deadlier weapon than their sexuality -which they also use quite shrewdly. In her debut scene, Ramona performs an extraordinarily elaborate striptease, the sheer eroticism of which is only matched by the striking power she exudes and the ludicrously symbolic volumes of cash thrown at her, at one point carpeting her stage. “The whole country is a strip club,” she says at one point. “You’ve got people tossing the money, and people doing the dance.”
The criminal enterprise is birthed out of an understandable combination of desperation for self-sufficiency, frustration with wealth disparity, and a lust for sexual dominance over arrogant, privileged men. Given their methods aren’t violent, you’re prone to equate their scheme with that of a heist: a seemingly harmless crime that only hurts the bank accounts of the exorbitantly wealthy -until it’s not. But the film makes a pretty good case for the women even as Ramona’s choices and subtle modes of manipulation on her cohorts become dangerous. Through it all they remain a family (another gangster code), and you feel the relationship, the closeness of these women who are truly understood only by each other. Mercedes (Keke Palmer) and Annabelle (Lili Reinhart) are the other founders of the hustle, comic relief to a degree, but strongly so and well-performed. However, the relationship between Dorothy and Ramona is the movies’ glue -so much rests on their partnership. They’re not merely a mentor and student, nor does their friendship conventionally sour. Ramona may act unforgivably, but she’s still there for Dorothy when she needs her. It’s a complex relationship, one of the most fascinating I’ve seen this year and the performances from both actresses are tremendous. I’ve heard some say this is Lopez’s best performance, and though I’m not quite familiar enough with her filmography to make that call, it is pretty great and organically multi-faceted. But Wu is just as good, delivering with remarkable depth and captivating vulnerability an unexpectedly compelling protagonist.
Scafaria’s direction is essential to this, and while she’s clearly borrowing a few tricks from Scorsese and others, she makes some interesting choices herself. A lot of the strip club scenes are shot, as is common with nightclubs, in that dark blue-purple scheme sometimes referred to as Bi-lighting; and Scarfaria knows how to use it to accentuate characters and make the scenes pop. The long tracking shots and slow motion interludes are very effective, especially in one intense dream sequence. Her transitions are smooth, her compositions smart, she knows how to frame an impactful visual (such as one scene at an ATM near the end); but it’s the things she does with sound editing that are perhaps most interesting, including muting the sound when a particularly traumatic memory is brought up, and one sequence where a characters’ dialogue is cleverly communicated via the recording playback of the wire she’s wearing.
Hustlers is no ordinary crime movie. It’s no ordinary stripper movie either -there’s none of the outrageous antics or bizarre voyeurism of Verhoeven’s Showgirls or the banal self-seriousness of Striptease. Rather than use sexiness as a selling point as those films did, Hustlers reclaims scopophilic feminine sexuality for women and uses it to make a statement. This is a movie that is simultaneously a crime drama set in the world of New York City strip clubs while also a destigmatization of that industry and the women who work in it. It’s a not insignificant balancing act, and one that surely means something in the fight against those old social conventions shamelessly doing the dance.
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JordanBosch
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/jbosch/
Comments
Post a Comment