Broken Mirrors (1984)
directed by Marleen Gorris
starring Henriëtte Tol, Lineke Rijxman
Cult Epics
Generally when you think of a film dealing with prostitution your mind is likely to go to something unrepentantly sleazy and misogynist, like Gary Sherman’s Vice Squad (1982), but Dutch film director Marleen Gorris’ sophomore effort, Broken Mirrors, delivers something quite different. Gorris delivers a film that is more complex and provocative and decidedly non-exploitative. Like her first film A Question of Silence, Broken Mirrors is another intimate portrait of women bonding under extreme stress.
Diane (Lineke Rijxman) takes a job in a brothel in Amsterdam to support her baby and junkie husband. She enters a world that, apart from the sex, is indistinguishable from any low-wage workplace populated by women. The women of the brothel share the same petty jealousies, in-fighting, and camaraderie that a group of secretaries or waitresses might share in their time on and off the clock. The major difference is of course the sex and the inherent danger that comes with the job — danger that the women too quickly get used to, until it becomes a blur like the faces and bodies of the men they service for 100 guilders a throw.
The danger is very real, as unbeknownst to the whores (their word), a serial killer is a client of the brothel and it is implied that at least one of their number has fallen victim to him. The transitory nature of the job keeps them from being too concerned about a missing colleague, and they are mostly concerned about having enough business to make the day worth coming in for. The killer is an upper-middle-class businessman who lives to abduct women and hold them prisoner in a basement. He keeps them chained to a bed and takes his pleasure from hearing them beg for their lives, for food and water. He documents their torment and starvation in Polaroids he keeps taped to the wall for them to see. The killer’s identity is not revealed until the final act, when he and the whores of the brothel cross paths in the most unexpected way. It is brutally unnerving in its lack of violence, because we get to see just how callous he is — and how dehumanized the whores are in the eyes of their clients.
Freed from the restrictions of television, Marleen Gorris takes a huge step up with Broken Mirrors, a film that is far more complex both in terms of themes and filmmaking, The film is fearless in its portrayal of disposable women living their lives in a dehumanizing world where violence is a constant threat, a reality that Gorris makes clear is not unique to women working the Amsterdam Red Light District, but is a universal norm.
Broken Mirrors makes its American home-video debut on DVD and Blu-ray from Cult Epics. The disc boasts a 4k transfer of the film with an audio commentary from film historian Peter Verstraten and a short 1984 Dutch TV interview with American sex work advocate Margo St. James.
