The narrative of this documentary explains the tragic life of teenage prostitution. It details how Misssey was created and its mission. It consults the views of its members, former prostitutes, and organizers. All interviewees detail their experience with under-aged prostitution and how they ended up with Misssey. The film works well in its narrative because with each new interviewee, the story gets more and more personal, more and more detailed. We can literally visualize the tragedies of these girls being picked up off the street by pimps. At one point, we get detailed descriptions of the horrors these children suffer through because of their situation. It gets really horrible and we are left with a bitter taste of disgust in our mouths.
This is furthered by the general apathy of our society towards this topic and the trend of inaction that is shown through spectators, those aware of the situation, and those who will look at this documentary and do nothing. But again, the really punch in this documentary comes from the personal ties the interviewees have to the situation and the inspirational stories some of them share provoke a sense of hope in us, and in the kids who have the misfortune to fall into this situation and have the chance to see this documentary.
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The camera work is pretty varied. The interviews all have the same, slightly skewed, bust shot framing, but the b-roll is definitely more varied. There are cropped frames, low viewpoints, tight close-ups, dolly shots from a car, and shaky shots used for stylistic effect. But it should be noted that most shots are simply of talking heads. The b-roll for this story is limited by the fact that you cannot get some of this footage because it is too dangerous, because of privacy constraints, etc… Yet the b-roll is not what makes this film. It’s the story. Although, to make the shots more powerful, I would have added a “crier.” It sounds crude, but with a sad topic like this, I would have added an interviewee who is prone to crying when telling her story near the middle to really accentuate the seriousness of this topic.
Just the shot of the emotion connected to the story would help convey the story so much better, because then it really lifts us up when we see the bright side of this organization’s work.
The editing is nothing special. It is simple cutting between talking heads and b-roll. The editing of the b-roll itself is not too special either. They really stayed with simple cuts in this project, occasionally throwing in a cross-dissolve.
The audio is melancholic at times, made up of a simple score. Occasionally the music takes over in times of silence and sometimes there is no audio at all. The audio is composed mostly of the interviews, which I think, is perfectly fine because we focus on the story and not the sounds. There is a lot of information to take in and if the score were any louder or more diverse, it would be overpowering and we would lose the focus of the film.
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