Whore 1991

Liz, Theresa Russell, is a Los Angeles street prostitute who opens the film by directly addressing the audience, sharing her life and the multitude of problems she faces. On a crowded downtown street near a tunnel, she refuses a demanding customer who wants anal sex and also brushes off a van full of men who had previously abused her. A passing elderly man offers help—his handkerchief, and a possible trip to the hospital—yet Liz returns his generosity later, sending back the money with a note and a new handkerchief, signaling a complicated mix of gratitude and independence. Throughout, the tone stays intimate and unflinching as she confronts the daily hazards of her trade and the emotional toll of her past.

We learn that Liz dreams of escaping life on the street and the tightening grip of her pimp Blake, a dapper, controlling figure who runs a tight, predatory operation. Her backstory unfolds in fragments: a small-town girl who marries a violent, alcoholic husband named Bill, and after bearing a son, she flees the abuse. She keeps the child in her heart as she drifts between poverty and late-night shifts at a diner. A pivotal moment comes when a paying customer asks for sex, and she agrees to prostitution as a means to survive. This path eventually leads her to Blake in Los Angeles. Blake can provide some practical support—he’s the one who helps with tattoos and logistics—but his power over Liz is coercive and sometimes brutal, echoing the violence she escaped from with Bill.

In the titling rhythm of the film, Liz forms a fragile alliance with a fellow sex worker who is violently attacked by a client. Liz brings the injured woman to a theater bathroom, hoping to save her life, and a theater patron, Katie, steps in to help. Katie is portrayed as intellectual and kind, and she lends Liz the novel Animal Farm, the first book Liz completes. Their burgeoning friendship complicates Liz’s life: Blake uses menace to undermine the bond, and he accuses Katie of lesbianism, driving a wedge between the two women. The city’s shadows lengthen as Liz clings to this new connection even as she suspects the dangerous consequences of staying with Blake.

An additional thread introduces Rasta, a local homeless street performer who does a hair-raising act walking on broken glass. He offers Liz a small escape by inviting her to watch a film with him, and the scenes of their time inside the cinema are intercut with Blake’s own life narration, creating a disorienting, almost theatrical collage of Liz’s world. Within these interludes, Liz recounts more of her encounters with clients—one, a man with a shoe fetish, who wants Liz to insult him while he masturbates with her stilettos in his mouth, a detail that underscores the odd, brutal humor and the perverse edges of her experiences.

After the film, Liz speaks of her son with tenderness, clearly loving him, though he is now in foster care. That night, she crosses paths with an elderly, well-dressed client who drives her to a parking garage in a vintage car. The encounter turns tragic as the man dies of a heart attack, and Liz wrestles with the thrill and fear of mortality in the space between life and death. Blake reappears and, driven by greed and jealousy, attempts to ambush the dead man’s body to steal money and, in a violent confrontation, he attacks Liz, breaking one of her fingers and threatening to push her son into gay prostitution. The moment crystallizes when Liz defends herself with fierce resolve, retorting, “I’ll kill you first!”

The film’s final act erupts in a brutal act of retribution. Rasta, ever watchful, steps in and ends Blake’s life by slitting his throat, bringing a brutal sense of justice to Liz’s world. As Blake falls, Liz acknowledges Rasta’s help, and with the danger finally dissipating, she walks away from the wreckage of her past, moving forward with a quiet strength that remains at the core of her character.

Throughout, the movie’s stark realism is balanced by poignant moments of tenderness, loyalty, and survival. The interwoven storytelling—Liz’s direct address, the flashback-laden backstory, the theater intercuts with Blake’s voiceover, and the stark, often brutal encounters on the street—creates a portrait of a woman navigating a brutal economy of sex and power. The film does not glamorize Liz’s choices; rather, it scrutinizes the systems that shape them, while also leaving room for small acts of humanity—a handkerchief returned with care, a book borrowed and read, a friend who sees, and a man who protects, even at great personal cost. In the end, Liz’s walk away from the theater and the men who would define her life signals a fragile, hard-won resilience—one that continues beyond the frame.