The title gives precisely the proper emphasis. This is a movie about female employees, about their relations to each other, to their customers, to their employer. Their place of business, which automatically arouses a wider-spread interest than would a movie set at a dry cleaner's or a donut shop, is a strictly functional Manhattan brothel, with appointments by phone only and a large pool of regulars. There is nothing in the unsqueamish and chillingly antiseptic depiction of the place to suggest what keeps the men coming (pun, if you insist, intended), but there is an ample fund of information about what keeps it going: disposing of a filled condom in a Kleenex, making a hickey vanish with a silver spoon, etc. Some awkward acting, undisguisedly didactic dialogue, and flat, leaden sound quality somewhat erode the educational value, and don't enhance the entertainment value in compensation. However, a change in shifts midway through the movie (the action spans one workday and centers around one worker, Molly, who is pressed into staying over for the night shift) brings in a freshening change of characters, or just as importantly gets rid of a particularly strident young gum-chewing one (Amanda Goodwin). Ellen McElduff's sweetly manipulative, grossly stereotypical boss -- with her flashing dimples, her hairspray-stiffened coiffure, her aerosol air-freshener, her illusions that she is running a sort of charm school, albeit with refractory students who must be watched every minute lest they put their feet on the furniture or sneak some pot, and her chirping salutation to each and every customer, "What's new and different?" -- is a highly successful comic portrait, perhaps a bit out of key with the documentary drone of the piece, but no less welcome for all that. In fact, all the more welcome. And it is she who best brings the movie into focus as a study of the workplace. With Louise Smith. (1987) — Duncan Shepherd
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