Queens« strippers put on a film show

Cinema Wednesdays - Loris S. Musumeci

«This city, this whole country, is a club of striptease. There are those who dance and those who throw bills.»

The music taps and taps until the end of the night, and they dance and dance and dance to the chorus they like. And even if they don't like the chorus, the girls dance anyway. Because that's their job, in this strip club where hotties warm you up. Destiny (Constance Wu), the newcomer, also dances, but has trouble heat and stuffing her panties with tips. She's hot, but uncomfortable. Yet this novice can't give up: she needs this job.

Fascinated by Ramona (Jennifer Lopez), a queen of sensual dance at the club, she asks her for advice. Destiny wants to learn how to drive the customers wild. And it works! Ramona takes Destiny under her wing, and together they become true «tigresses,» in their own words. But then the 2008 financial crisis hits, and the Wall Street brokers who kept the club running either disappear or become stingy. Along with the crisis, personal problems also begin to surface for the dancers. And since there’s strength in numbers, Ramona and Destiny team up with two other dancers in distress to regain their success. At the cost of cunning—and scams. Not that hard to pull off—since men’s brains are often located below the belt—but certainly risky.

A show

Queens by young director Lorene Scafaria opens with a show. Or, more precisely, in the dressing rooms of the club. The dancers are busy getting their costumes ready to treat the audience to another hot and lively evening. We follow Destiny onto the stage. The shots alternate between her own perspective and that of the audience. Carried away by the music and enchanted by the artificial lights spewing pink and sparkles galore, the audience in the movie theater and the one at the club blend together.

Throughout the film, the theatrical element is ever-present; it is therefore appropriate to refer to it as a “theatrical film,” which, in this specific regard, is a truly original and successful aspect of the work. The immersion in the club is total. Whether we like it or not, we’ve bought a ticket to a club striptease when buying a movie ticket. You can feel the entertainment, but also the unease. Obscenity is never far away. This highlights the risk the director took—sometimes seen as artistic courage, other times as vulgar audacity. It’s up to the viewer to pass judgment. It’s up to me to enjoy it.

Watch out for nonsense

But not everything is to everyone's taste. Despite its spectacular scale, Queens It also has its flaws. These become apparent precisely when the camera leaves the stage to sneak into the dancers’ respective homes. Of course, the point of a story like this is also to delve into the girls’ private lives—as long as it doesn’t descend into silliness. And, sorry to say: we’re diving headfirst into a sea of sappiness.

Destiny wants to earn money to pay off her grandmother’s debts—her grandmother raised her after she was abandoned by her mother. She, in turn, becomes a mother, has a falling-out with her boyfriend, and has to raise her daughter on her own. You might say: the situation is realistic in and of itself. Yes. Yet the script is so overloaded with melodrama that it fails to truly capture Destiny’s suffering. There’s also too much black-and-white thinking, which portrays women as perpetual victims of men. The same goes for Ramona’s story: she, too, has to raise her daughter on her own and faces discrimination from her boss and her clients.

Next!

It’s a shame, then, that the film succeeds in only one of these two aspects: the public side, filmed in the club, comes across well, but not the private, home-video aspect. The worst part is actually the interaction between the dancers themselves. They devise a violent and cleverly gory plan of action against the wolves of Wall Street, but among themselves, the «Oh, my darling!»s, «That bag looks so good on you, sweetie!» create a jarring disconnect from the characters they’re portraying in their scheme. Moreover, all these saccharine lines just get tiresome. You don’t play at being a Barbie doll doing shopping with her friends, after all!  

A defect that does not prevent Queens to ask real questions. No, this isn’t an arthouse film. No, we won’t classify this feature film as a philosophical fable. Nevertheless, the social tragicomedy genre suits it well. In fact, it’s a true story. One that, relatively speaking, makes you think about the place that paid sensuality occupies in society. «Paid sensuality» is a vague term, insofar as the screenplay doesn’t merely question whether there’s anything perverse about paying girls to dance in front of you—and, I should point out, to rub up against you. The script goes so far as to raise the broader issue of prostitution.

Striptease is not prostitution, except that Lorene Scafaria shows us how the striptease becomes prostitution. In the eyes of the clients. After the crisis, even the wealthiest are still demanding it, while wanting to pay less and less. Fully aware that their requests are illegal, they demand blowjobs and everything else bells and whistles. The camera doesn't hesitate to show them for the scoundrels they are.

Is it still morally acceptable to swindle them using methods that are anything but ethical? «We need to think like the guys on Wall Street.» These thieves are fleecing ordinary people. Why not give them the same punishments? «All the followers of the world should join hands», sang Jacques Brel, whose song Next is reproduced in its English version to support the solidarity of the strippers who come together. Except that victims can become tormentors, especially when dealing with poor guys who didn’t ask for any of this. Destiny is plagued by pangs of conscience, yet she’s not ready to rein in her tiger-like instincts. Especially since the show has only just begun.   

«You're just another transaction to them.» 

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Photo credit: © Impuls Pictures