The Celluloid Bordello - Lilith Likes to Watch Documentary December 2025
Title: The Celluloid Bordello
Year: 2021
Starring: Juliana Piccillo, Annie Sprinkle
Director: Juliana Piccillo
Synopsis: The Celluloid Bordello brings sex workers to the cinema. With equal parts historical overview, critique, and homage, this eye-opening film lets real-life dommes, escorts, porn stars, and hustlers tell you which films they love and which they hate, which get it right and which miss the mark, and, most importantly, how perpetuating stereotypes in media affects real peoples’ lives. - Via PinkLabel.tv
Lilith's Notes: Depth will cost extra.
"You're either Pretty Woman, or Monster."
You know what would be unbelievably annoying? If I brought forth a thesis for this review and then spent the rest of my word count just bopping along from one maybe kind of sort of tangentially related point to another with as little connective tissue as possible. Wouldn't that be a great use of everyone's time? Wouldn't you walk away feeling like you learned something? What did you learn? Who knows? But surely you must have learned something? Anything? Right?
The Celluloid Bordello posits that sex workers are portrayed unfairly, as cliches, or disposable. While they're not wrong, their well meaning, dirty anecdotes and tenuous cinematic examples stretch the film’s credibility to its limit real hard, real fast.
First of all, holy Hell this documentary’s presentation is cheap. The credits look like they were made in iMovie, and really sets the mood about credulity right from the start. I suppose I could believe the budget went to securing the rights to show the various film clips, and that’s valid, but at least zhuzh up the font or something.
We are told by real life sex workers that if you want to make someone suffer, make them a whore, because that’s short-hand for making them dirty and less than. To buttress this point, we’re shown a montage of bad things happening to various sex workers from various film and television shows. We end on a dramatic shot of Maeve from Westworld (Played by Thandiwe Newton) dramatically falling into the dust next to her presumably dead child. Except, that tragic situation happened before Maeve was a sex worker. Not to mention, there’s a whole other thing to nitpick about this particular suggestion if we really wanted to, because of the nature of Westworld but that’s maybe for another review.
The director and professional sex worker Juliana Piccillo got into the line of work at the tender age of seventeen in a massage parlor. One night she turned on the television and saw then elven-year-old Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby, surrounded by a “found family” of prostitutes in a brothel where they raise her to give it up to the highest bidder. Piccillio extolled how she felt seen by that movie and related to Brooke’s character. You were seventeen. You made a choice to go out on your own. You could have worked fast food. She was a child in and out of the movie, exploited for her sexuality that she had no control over. Fuck off.
Or, in other words, consenting adults playing roles in which they are abused or portrayed poorly is frowned upon, but exploiting children is perfectly fine, comforting even.
Okay.
Look, sometimes we can’t help what we relate to, or what inspires us, but maybe be a little more prudent and don’t say the quiet part quite so loud.
Moving on.
There’s snark about Pretty Woman, which is basically just Cinderella, so I guess Cinderella is verboten now, too. But, specifically they point out how uneducated Julia Robert’s character is while being told what fancy cutleries go with what course of meal. I would like to see any of the talking heads in the documentary flawlessly list out cutlery etiquette. Please.
Next, they bring up the scene where Robert’s character is looked down upon by two women working in an expensive clothing boutique. First of all, god forbid a movie have a scene with conflict in it. Second of all, they don’t show the very cute and very funny retort Robert’s character indulges in later on. It’s a great scene and masterfully, cheekily delivered. Too bad.
We then receive another montage about how movies about sex workers often win Oscars, which, yes, but again the way it’s portrayed is disingenuous. What movies were also up for nominations those years? How many years lapsed between winners? They throw in a random Documentary about India’s brothels. They’re using Liz Taylor and Jane Fonda, two esteemed actresses as examples. Taylor was nominated for three Oscars before she won for BUtterfield 8 and Jane Fonda was nominated once before winning for playing a call girl in Klute.
Of course, we can’t leave Charlize Theron and Monster out of this conversation. In my opinion, that’s a different story. Not only was she portraying a sex worker, and murderer, but an actual real life human being. That’s more than just “playing a whore”.
Do you see what I mean? Absolutely everything is plucked from its context and put on a stage, poked and prodded and we’re told “See? See? Look how cliche! How bad! Bet you never thought of it like this before, hmm?”
And not a single mention of Ken Russel’s Whore!
Highlight: There were, at rare times, tiny little bits of a good point here and there.
Lowlight: Everything was way too floaty and tangential. Less a documentary and more a glorified bitching session.
LILITH'S SCORE: 1.5/5 - It stripped everything of context to get what it wanted.
Until next time, my voracious voyeurs. I’m Lilith, and I’m always watching.
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