Friday, March 26, 2010

2010 CIFF: A Call Girl

Today the late show I caught after volunteering was a Slovenian film called A Call Girl. The film's editor who introduced the film said it was originally called Slovenian Girl but the American distributor's thought it would fair better under A Call Girl, so there you have it. Anyways, the film is about a young college student who sells herself to pay for rent and school. It opens with her visiting an obese client who has a heart attack and dies. It turns out he is some government bigwig and the police begin looking for the girl to question her. This was basically the description I read in the CIFF film brochure and I decided to see it because it sounded to be like a capable thriller, and for a while it is. However the film shifts tones to much from thriller to comedy to drama and doesn't really know what it wants to be. Also many interesting storylines do not payoff and the film feels incomplete. I did like the performance of her father as a suicidal musician who cares about his daughter, but even his scenes felt out of place. A Call Girl is a movie that sets things up very well but never follows through.
**1/2