Call Girl

Based on a true story, Call Girl can feel like two different movies squashed together and while both sometimes don't gel as well as director Mikael Marcimain would like, each are riveting in their own right.

Sweden of 1976 is a time of sweeping cultural and social changes with its relaxed views on sex and its pioneering attitude towards women's rights. None of that concerns fourteen-year-old tearaway Iris (Karemyr), however, who is admitted to a juvenile delinquent centre where she strikes up a friendship with Sonja (Asplund). During one of their nightly forays off the centre's campus, the rebellious friends are persuaded by the kindly Dagmar (August) to have sex with men for money. With Dagmar as their Madame, their exclusive clientele soon branches out to include politicians, and honest detective Sandberg (Berger) heads up an investigation into the high profile prostitution ring that he feels is being deliberately thwarted by those further up the chain of command.

What we have here is two movies for the price of one: a hard-hitting teenage drama and a sleazy political thriller. The former tackles a wayward youth/no future story that highlights the hypocrisy that while feminism is preached, misogyny (and paedophilia) is practiced, while the latter has a Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy encroaching atmosphere of men in suits talking subtext in smoky rooms. Underneath both is a John Carpenter-esque soundtrack, complete with a tacky synthy bass line, which feels odd in the latter and is completely out of place in the former. It’s during these instances that Call Girl draws too much attention to itself, undoing the considerable lengths the production designers went to to convince you it's 1976 for two hours.

August, whom you know as Anakin Skywalker's mum, provides the standout performance, switching from motherly affection to, when Iris suggests quitting, something altogether darker and creepier, and she keeps both believable. It's not often we get a villain written with this kind of depth.

A cold and dispassionate film (all sex scenes are joyless affairs), Mikael Marcimain resists the temptation to load his film with emotion, taking a step back to allow the audience to fill that void.