The Working Girls

THE WORKING GIRLS follows three young women in Los Angeles searching for their place in the world. Honey arrives from her small hometown with nothing but a backpack. Denise is an artist who paints billboards to earn some money. Jill, a law student, works as a waitress at a striptease joint and gets entangled unexpectedly with the criminal underworld. The focus is not on the women's love affairs, but on the fundamental question of the material conditions of their lives, professional ambitions and moral principles. Rothman also masters the game of reversing expectations here. Before her first performance, a nervous stripper is advised by an experienced colleague to simply imagine that the men watching her are naked. The gaze is reversed and those who think they are in a safe voyeur role are suddenly displayed without clothes. (al)