Film

Working Girls

Name: Working Girls
Genre: Drama
Released: 1987
Cast: Ellen McElduff, Amanda Goodwin, Marusia Zach, Janne Peters, Helen Nicholas

Drama

Lizzie Borden's unflinching 1987 film follows a lesbian photography student navigating sex work in Manhattan to fund her art. It's a precise, unglamorous look at labor, desire, and survival—methodical where exploitation films sensationalize. For anyone interested in feminist cinema that treats its subjects with radical dignity rather than judgment.

TMDb rating

3.1

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Taxi Driver1976

A masterpiece of urban alienation and moral decay that shares Working Girls' unflinching gaze at the underbelly of New York. Scorsese's precision mirrors Borden's—every frame carries weight.

But It's bleak, deliberately slow, and Travis Bickle is a deeply disturbing protagonist. The violence can feel gratuitous to modern viewers.

Klute1971

Jane Fonda as a sex worker in a police procedural that treats her with intelligence and complexity. It's about agency and entanglement, shot with noir elegance and emotional nuance.

But The thriller plot can feel secondary to character study. Some find the pacing glacial by contemporary standards.

Safe1995

Todd Haynes examines a woman's body becoming a site of contradiction and isolation. Like Working Girls, it's methodical, unsettling, and deeply feminist—but in an entirely different register.

But It's austere and suffocating. The film refuses catharsis or clear answers, which frustrates some viewers.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Working Girls

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Red Psalm1972

Both Borden and Jancsó reject cinema as entertainment or moral instruction, instead using the camera as a tool to expose power structures—sexual, economic, political—without flinching or editorializing.

Miklós Jancsó's Brechtian Hungarian epic about peasant rebellion uses bodies, labor, and desire as political weapons. Like Working Girls, it's formally radical and refuses sentiment, but here the stage is history and collective struggle.

But It's abstract, dialogue-heavy, and makes no concession to narrative clarity. Expect long takes, political debate, and gorgeous compositional rigor rather than plot.

My Own Private Idaho1991

Gus Van Sant's portrait of young male sex workers in Portland has the same observational intimacy and refusal to moralize. It's poetic where Working Girls is documentary-like, but equally humane.

But Structurally loose and dreamy. If you want narrative drive, you won't find it here.

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles1976

Chantal Akerman's three-hour meditation on a woman's daily routines—including sex work—as labor. The ultimate ancestor of Working Girls' formal precision and refusal of spectacle.

But It's genuinely difficult. Three hours of real time, minimal dialogue, repetitive tasks. Patience is non-negotiable.

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles poster

Beau Travail2000

Claire Denis transforms masculine discipline and desire through dance and color. It shares Working Girls' interest in bodies as sites of power, vulnerability, and labor—just in radically different contexts.

But It's elliptical and sensual where Working Girls is matter-of-fact. The narrative is fragmentary; meaning emerges slowly.

American Gigolo1980

Paul Schrader's mirror-image film—a male escort's world of surfaces and emotional emptiness. Elegant and melancholic, it offers a useful counterpoint to how gender shapes the same labor.

But It's deeply '80s in its aesthetic and can feel dated. The emotional payoff is minimal.

Nights of Cabiria1957

Fellini's portrait of a Roman sex worker searching for love and dignity is luminous, tragic, and endlessly compassionate. A true humanist masterpiece about survival and hope against odds.

But It's sentimental where Working Girls is clinical. The romanticization of female suffering won't sit right with everyone.

Streetwise1984

Martin Bell's documentary of Seattle's homeless youth includes unflinching portraits of survival sex work. Raw and immersive, it has the observational power of Working Girls but with real people and real stakes.

But Deeply depressing and occasionally exploitative of its subjects. Some sequences feel voyeuristic in ways the film doesn't interrogate.

In the Realm of the Senses1976

Both films treat sex as central to labor, identity, and power rather than marginalizing it. Both refuse the viewer comfort and ask us to look unflinchingly at desire as work, performance, and truth simultaneously.

Nagisa Oshima's film about desire, power, and obsession between a man and a woman is sexually explicit, visually precise, and intellectually serious in ways most films dare not be. It's transgressive filmmaking in service of human complexity.

But The graphic sexual content is unapologetic and continuous. It's banned in several countries. If you need narrative distance from sexuality, this isn't it.

The Girlfriend Experience2009

Both explore how women monetize intimacy while maintaining an opaque interior self. Both films are structured as work—repetitive, procedural, rhythmic—rather than as drama seeking emotional climax.

Steven Soderbergh's portrait of a high-end escort during the 2008 financial crisis uses fractured temporality and intimate detail to map economics onto sexuality. It's cold, sophisticated, and utterly focused on the texture of transaction.

But Soren's performance is deliberately blank and detached. The film offers no interiority, no catharsis. Many find it distant and emotionally inaccessible.