Whores' Glory

2012

Whores' Glory

Critics Consensus

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Movie Info

Whores' Glory, the third film in Michael Glawogger's globalization trilogy (following Megacities, Workingman's Death), is an explicit and unflinching exposé of global prostitution. Glawogger's latest larger-than-life documentary is an audacious, non-judgmental study of sexuality, politics, human behavior and the effects of capital and religion on both women and men from starkly different cultures. -- (C) Kino Lorber

Rating:

NR
Genre:

Documentary, Special Interest
Directed By:

Michael Glawogger
Written By:

Michael Glawogger
In Theaters:

Apr 27, 2012 limited
On Disc/Streaming:

Jan 8, 2013
Box Office:

$31,313
Runtime:

119 minutes
Studio:

Kino Lorber

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News & Interviews for Whores' Glory

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Critic Reviews for Whores' Glory

All Critics (23) | Top Critics (11) | Fresh (20) | Rotten (3)

"Whores' Glory" takes a deadpan, nonjudgmental approach, which generally works well, even if the fly-on-the-wall technique makes clear that what attracts flies usually stinks.

Jul 6, 2012 | Rating: 3/4 | Full Review…

Michael O'Sullivan
Washington Post
Top Critic
Glawogger has the good sense mostly to stay out of the way and let the material speak for itself.

Jun 14, 2012 | Rating: 2.5/4 | Full Review…

Mark Feeney
Boston Globe
Top Critic
To experience it is to be haunted by the bleakness and ugliness of prostitution, the hopeless trap of it, and the defeat of love that it represents.

May 24, 2012 | Rating: 3/4 | Full Review…

Mick LaSalle
San Francisco Chronicle
Top Critic
A daring, novelistic and unforgettable account of the real lives of female prostitutes in three very different countries and social contexts.

Apr 28, 2012 | Full Review…

Andrew O'Hehir
Salon.com
Top Critic
Austrian documentarian Michael Glawogger takes his cameras to three red-light districts around the world, and finds life is miserable for the women who work in the world's oldest profession - and for the men who pay cash for sex.

Apr 27, 2012 | Rating: 3/4 | Full Review…

V.A. Musetto
New York Post
Top Critic
[A] quietly powerful but dispiriting documentary, which compares the world's oldest profession as practiced from place to place.

Apr 26, 2012 | Rating: 3.5/5

Stephen Holden
New York Times
Top Critic
Shines a light in the darkness on the seedy, gritty, shocking world where sex is little more than a business.

Aug 5, 2019 | Rating: 3/4 | Full Review…

Matthew Lucas
From the Front Row
Glawogger's latest slice of global miserableness may not be eyeopening, but it's honest.

Jul 9, 2019 | Full Review…

Nicholas Bell
IONCINEMA.com
Glowagger's display of the range of consequences that come with the sex trade make for one of the best documentaries of the year.

Jul 2, 2019 | Rating: 7.9/10 | Full Review…

C.J. Prince
Way Too Indie
The women of Whores' Glory seek...salvation in their faith, but this sometimes glorified look at their lives reveals only the darkest nights of the soul.

Aug 30, 2018 | Full Review…

Pat Padua
DCist
For a film with such fraught subject matter, Whores' Glory feels ultimately empty. Whether or not that's the ultimate comment on these lives is unclear.

Jun 13, 2016 | Full Review…

Violet Lucca
The L Magazine
Glawogger works hard at being objective and dispassionate and unsentimental, but he's clearly on the side of the working girls, and horrified by their salivating johns.

Jun 14, 2012 | Rating: 3/4 | Full Review…

Gerald Peary
Boston Phoenix

View All Critic Reviews (23)

Audience Reviews for Whores' Glory

Jul 14, 2014

This film is probably one of the grittiest, glaringly horrific, and offensive documentaries to deal with the world of sex workers, worldwide. The subjects depicted in these three thirld world countries are open and opininated about their work and the sexual politics associated with their profession. It's so painfully aware of its own degradation and accuracy, shot beautifully and yet so ugly in its content. Director Michael Glawogger travelled to Thailand, Bangladesh, and Mexico to examine the attitudes of its citizens in regards to how women are treated as commodities. The women see their profession as an ends to a mean, and their only hope, while men see them as objects, and the interchangeable dialogue between the two reflects a dissonance of opinion on the subject of gender politics. The use of music, cinematography, and interviews interspersed between the action, really detail the inhumane conditions of the sex industry and the horrible standards set by a begrudging society.

Spencer S Super Reviewer
Nov 22, 2013

This movie strives and succeeds to do nothing more than give us complete, unrequited intimacy with female prostitutes of Thailand, Bangladesh, and Mexico, none of whom wanted their names on the film. It's remarkable how candid and comfortable everyone is with the camera present. There is no verbal narrative from Director Glawogger, only the women and their customers, but Glawogger complements their stories with a delicate soundtrack and camera angles full of information, sensation, and introspection. There are no judgements explicitly placed here, nor are there any motions of activism. The film invites the viewer to think for themselves about the whys and the hows of economics, society, culture, and the instinctual drive for both sex and survival. In one scene, a young, soft spoken Bangladeshi who looked as if she knew her life is already written on the wall, broke a silence, "We women are actually very unhappy creatures. It is very hard to survive as a woman . . . Why do women suffer this much? Isn't there another path for us?" She paused. "Is there a path at all? . . . Who can truly answer this question?" Who, indeed.

Matthew S Super Reviewer