A warm-hearted and at times gently insightful delve into the life of Anny, a Czech sex-worker who didn’t take to the streets until she was 46 and talks with a gentle pragmatism about her family, background, communist history, sex work and delight in performing at a nearby theatre. She never asks for pity nor concern for her children and her health, but simply gets on with her life in a matter-of-fact fashion.
Director Helena Třeštíková and her crew visited Anny from 1996 (a year after she started as a sex worker) to 2012 – she dubs her films about ordinary people as “time-lapse documentaries” – over a period that sees her at work at her various daytime jobs as well as streetwalking at Prague’s Perlova Street.
Charmingly, the film opens with Anny singing about her time as a sex worker on stage at a concert organised by NGO Risk-Free Pleasure, a group that supports and educates sex workers. These moments of performing give her real moments of pleasure and escape in amongst the more worrying moments of her life. For her, the theatre company offers rare creative respite as well as being a supportive environment.
Over the period of filming, as she ages, the film follows her at work as an assistant in a restroom, taking change from people who want to use the toilets, or working as a cleaner of train carriages. She talks about the communist times, when her was husband sent to prison for not working and when she was sent to jail for six months for ‘freeloading.” She also talks about her children and worries about her grandson and his diabetes.
The film also charts her time on the streets from a middle-aged woman still keen on miniskirts through to a woman of pension-age who goes out on the streets once in a while to try and make some extra money for her children. Towards the end of the film, as she walks with a cane after illness, she joins a rally to campaign against violence to sex workers. She talks openly about that life – the perils of pimps, the number of women she used to work with who have become junkies and quite simply how life has changed and become harder as the economic crisis hits everyone.
Třeštíková’s filming and editing style is never to take a critical viewpoint, more simply to follow a life. Anny is an open, honest and pragmatic personality…as a rule she puts on a smile on her face for the camera, just as for her customers in the restroom or those who approach her on the street. Grinning at the camera, she confesses as a 60-year-old that she simply can’t manage to give up smoking: “Doctor, please forgive me!”
The film draws to an end as Anny, aged 62, is still working as a restroom assistant, freshly released from hospital, suffering from lung problems and still haggling with customers, and proudly talking about her grandson. And also still performing at the theatre as the organisation celebrates its 20th anniversary with a ball.
Czech Republic, 67mins
Director: Helena Třeštíková
Production: Negativ Film Productions
Producers: Katerina Cerna, Pavel Strnad
Cinematography: David Cysař, Vlastimil Hamernik, Martin Kubala, Ivan Vojnár, Stano Slušný, Jiří Chod, Ervín Sanders, Miroslav Souček, Martin Nováček, Braňo Pažitka, Tomáš Třeštík
Editor: Jakub Hejna
This review was first published in Business Doc Europe during IDFA 2020.
