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About 15 minutes or so Hustlers, Destiny of Constance Wu – and the audience – takes a look at Ramona, Jennifer Lopez, a seasoned stripper who takes the stage in what is clearly more than a performance; it's a Event. The camera, under the direction of Lorene Scafaria, does not look at Ramona because it slides around the pole with a gentle agility that can only be described as another world. It is sexual but not objectified; it transcends the conventional limits of sexuality. The men, in a supplicating act of worship, eagerly throw up piles of dollar bills raining around Ramona before settling at her feet. Women admire him. The camera fears her. As she slips into a split and bounces to the rhythm of the sensual and serpentine vocals of Fiona Apple's "Criminal", we see her as Destiny: A Hero. An enchantress. She has the power and she handles it with grace.
The feminine look is a sacred thing.
Insensitive to men long fed by media mainly – homogeneously – told through their own eyes. Not so different from Patty Jenkins Wonder Woman for the first time, the experience of watching Hustlers it's apparent to a lifted veil from your eyes. The feminine look should not look like this rare and remarkable thing, yet it evokes such a powerful emotion. It is at the same time: pure joy; the feeling of looking in a mirror and really seeing yourself – the real you, the you that you have always perceived as being, dug out from deep within yourself, the entrails and everything – reflected on you; the sweet-bitter tang of melancholy to the realization that this is the exception and not the rule.
Based on riveting Jessica Pressler New York magazine article "The Hustlers at Scores" Hustlers tells a daring and empathic story of the haves and the have-nots – a story as old as time: Destiny struggles to make ends meet by living with his grandmother. So she takes another show at another strip club. She meets Ramona and a world of women (including Lizzo, Trace Lysette and Cardi B) who show her how to use her sexuality for maximum gain. "Drain the clock, not the rooster," says Cardi B Diamond what looks like a feminist inversion of Tom Cruise's "Respect Rooster, Tame the Pussy" sermon Magnolia. Ramona takes Destiny under his wing covered with a fur coat. Together, they form an unstoppable pair. They are trading portfolios of their wealthy Wall Street clientele until a series of unfortunate events, including the 2008 financial crash, tear Ramona and Destiny apart. other. Forced to work in retail businesses that barely pay for the bus ticket, not to mention the rent in New York, Ramona and Destiny struggle until it reluctantly returns to the strip club and that the dynamic duo meet unexpectedly. But this time, as Dorothy explains to an investigative journalist (Julia Stiles) in the "film present", Ramona has a few tricks in her bag: As a result of the financial crisis, the Wall Street men have become more reluctant to partake Ramona draws them to bars, doses them with an improvised party drug (MDMA generously mixed with ketamine), and drains the hell out of their credit cards without removing a single point of their clothes.
The Pressler article described these women as modern Robin Hood robbing the rich to give them to the poor, but the Scafaria film gives the story more nuance and vitality. It's a stimulating piece of cinematographic feminism, warts and everything else – in the literal sense of the term, since Scafaria's camera never fears visible fine lines and pores, dimples in her thighs that are easily shaking, breasts which are not the ideal airbrush and symmetrical, lips obviously superimposed. ; where the filter of the male gaze softens and corrects imperfections, the feminine gaze reinforces what we have internalized as "imperfect". We have never hated these pieces of our body until a magazine or TV show or our own mothers tell us that we should do it. And as for all idealistic projects, even and especially those with the best intentions in the world, the feminism of Ramona and her team – soon joined by Annabelle of Lili Reinhart and Mercedes of Keke Palmer – is vulnerable to corruption. While Ramona introduces another "wanderer" (Madeline Brewer Dawn), the contagion of her greed intensifies and turns into a poison that threatens to destroy everything these women have built. "I thought there was this magic number," Destiny tells the reporter, in an attempt to explain why they did not just stop hurrying when they had accumulated a good deal of the change. The dissolution is familiar: the crush becomes an addiction, greed eclipses the need. Their actions, once motivated by a desperate desire to live, are now motivated by a hideous hubris. The "magic number" does not exist because you can not fill a bottomless void.
Hustlers drew the predictable comparisons to Magic Mike – another film that humanized strippers, explored a typically American approach to the crush and featured the catchy performance of an older star in a paternal role (Matthew McConaugey). These comparisons are at best superficial: the Scafaria film has more in common with Magic MikeFollowing, Magic Mike XXL – a joyous cinematographic experience that seemed revolutionary in that it was a film of men and men that treated female desire with enthusiastic respect. That's not to say that Jennifer Lopez's performance is not worrying; In fact, she deserves more an Oscar nomination than McConaughey to play mostly on her own – but with party accessories and tear-off pants! – in Magic Mike. Lopez delivers a performance comparable to that of Robert De Niro at its peak, during this second wave with Martin Scorsese, which would turn Wu – who turns into a work just as phenomenal – Ray Liotta or Joe Pesci. That being said, Hustlers is more Casino than Goodfellas – if Casino were led by a woman and told through the eyes of Sharon Stone's character.
I'm going to say this, and the comparisons end here: Hustlers made for stripper films Wonder Woman made for superhero movies, and what Greta Gerwig did for fictitious female friendships, and what Nora Ephron did for rom-com. It's really special.
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