User reviews

The producers of this film seem not to have decided what they really wanted to do - a documentary? some social comment about prostitution? a drama about how a young student is almost driven into prostitution? a soft porn movie? The result is a mix of all those, without really being any of them. Denise Richards and Daryl Hannah seem very little at ease with their very thin acts inter-threaded with what seem to be interviews with real practicants of the older profession and porn actors and directors. The social comment is not consequent, sometimes forgiving, sometimes harsh, and in any case it does not say anything new about the subject that was or is said in any TV documentary. It is hard to say why they did this film, and who would be really interested in it.

A writer is interviewing prostitutes, porn stars and gigolos for her latest book. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, the scholarship of the student of PHD of anthropology Rebecca (Denise Richards) finishes and she has financial problem to keep her apartment. Her neighbor and call-girl Adrianna (Daryl Hannah) introduces her to prostitution.

"Yo Puta" is a weird and pointless movie that explores the underworld of sex through interviews. In 1991, the sexy Theresa Russell filmed the good Ken Russell's "Whore" talking to the camera in a pseudo-documentary style, and the result was an original movie. Unfortunately "Yo Puta" wastes interesting information in a dull screenplay. I have recently watched "Lilja 4-Ever", "Anjos do Sol" and "Human Trafficking", and all these movies are related to the contemporary slavery of the traffic of women. "In Yo Puta", this subject is approached and lost in the shallow screenplay. The story of Rebecca and Adrianna is awful and ridiculous. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Garotas de Programa" ("Call-Girls")

Maria Lidon is given credit for directing this documentary. It's funny because in the credits someone by the name of Luna appears to be its director, and frankly, we were under the impression that Spanish director, Bigas Luna, a man that loves to shock his audience, was the actual man directing.

What makes a woman turn into prostitution? The obvious answers would be poverty, desperation, sexual abuse, and having been deceived. But the writers of the documentary take the approach to the way some of these women have ended working in the world's oldest profession because the allure of the money that can be made, or just because they honestly like the idea of selling sex for a living. There are only a couple of males that talk frankly about the way they sell their bodies.

"The Life" might be deceiving for the casual viewer since in the credits we see some familiar names like Daryl Hannah, Denise Richards and Joaquim de Almeida, but their presence in the film is merely decorative. After seeing and listening to all the women interviewed speak openly about how they view their chosen 'career', these actors seem to be in the wrong picture.

Other than being curious about what "The Life" is about, nothing new is learned from the people being interviewed.

Yo Puta is interesting in the sense that it uses the documentary format (it's not a documentary - it just looks like one). Interspersed with various interviews of whores is a lame storyline populated by Daryl Hannah and Denise Richard's characters.

Yo Puta is probably most enlightening to people who have no idea of the difference between a streetwalker and a private escort, or a gigolo and a whore. Thematically, it offers a clichéd view of the world's oldest profession, and offers nothing new to the audience.

There is no emotional engagement with the purported whores. And their stripped-in backgrounds (mostly hotel rooms or other cheesy places) is distracting to say the least. Denise Richards and Daryl Hannah do little to save the anemic movie, mostly because their script is almost non-descript, predictable and totally lacks any concept of tension.

You won't miss a thing if you skip this movie. Actually, almost anything you do will be a better use of your time.

Many things could be said about this film - misleading, clichéd, style over substance, but in the end the most important aspect plays the decisive role: this film is boring.

The authors decided to present the film as a pseudo-documentary, but instead the viewer is subjected to seeing poorly acted commentary dialogue about prostitution over and over again. Maybe that would be interesting if the commentary itself had at least a spark of originality, alas... Person after person, every participant in this unwatchable boring mess says nothing but stereotypical b.s. It is almost as if the filmmakers made their product for someone from Mars - someone who has never seen or even heard of a prostitute in their entire life!

Oh, there is also Denise Richards in this movie. Yes. We all know that Denise Richards adds credibility to any movie! Seriously though, Richards and Daryl Hannah are in this film, but why they are here is anyone's guess. Their scenes could be easily taken out - they are not important. Well, in fact, the whole film is not important - just skip it altogether and watch something else.

MRA Entertainment, the distributor responsible for selling Yo Puta (or simply Whore as it is known here) on DVD, build a strong case for false advertising here. As opposed to the rather charming cover picture that appears on the IMDb entry, the Region 4 PAL DVD cover features both Daryl Hannah and Denise Richards so prominently that one could be forgiven for thinking they are the stars of the show. Although they are the biggest names in the film, their performances are little more than bookmarks for interviews. That these interviewees are so repugnant both in verbiage and physicality undermines the whole film. Just as we are getting interested in what the paid actors are doing, the film cuts away to interviews with actual putas who mostly only succeed in making the profession seem as repulsive as I am sure many feel it is. I am indifferent, having had no personal experience with it of any kind, but this film did not convert me either way because it comes off more as a student film. One that would get some very well-earned bad marks.

The plot that drives what little non-archival footage there is revolves around Richards' character, a mid-twenties student in anthropology. She needs money to pay the bills, and has a neighbour who works in prostitution. Having no other means to get herself out of the financial quagmire (this much I could relate to), she eventually tries prostitution. That is literally all there is to the plot, and it is stretched out over so much archival footage of prostitutes talking about their work that the main plot feels more like filler. There is one piece of archival footage that looks like the sort of thing one gets from one of those websites I will not mention here. You know the kind, the sort that have themes revolving around common attributes of models. Most of them offer free samples, so you can see what good there is in Yo Puta on said sites without paying for a rental.

Which brings me to my advice to both Hannah and Richards. Fire your agents, and do so now. Hannah already knows being a has-been, and while her appearance in films I will not glorify by mentioning here gave her a bit of a kick-start, she seems anxious to go back. At least judging by her appearance here. Richards' career has utterly tanked, and after seeing The Third Wheel, I cannot keep a straight face while calling this unjust. Joaquim de Almeida has little more than an extended cameo, portraying a rich customer. And these three actors basically make up the sum total of the legitimate actors in the film, unless you count the extras. Since three actors whose careers are, let us just say, in a lull does not a rounded, dynamic cast make. As previously mentioned, the interview cast do a lot less than pick up the slack. Given that a film about an illegitimate trade that brings many social problems needs a sympathetic focus at the best of times, this is very bad.

I would make statements about the cinematography, but since it mostly consists of one person standing before the camera and speaking, there really aren't any opportunities to be creative in this department. We could have done without the footage of one prostitute on a toilet with an obviously blue-screened backdrop, to say the least. This amplifies the ugliness of the subject three-fold, which is the last thing this particular individual needs. The music is by turns irritating or simply indifferent. But the real kicker is that two people are credited with writing this piece of crap. Sure, there is dialogue here, but no human being in their right mind should own up to having written it. I have never heard of the editor who is credited with working on Yo Puta, but two possibilities occur to me regarding the way it was cut together. Either this editor gave up after reel upon reel of barely cohesive footage, in which case it is the directors fault, or he simply cut the footage together in such a manner as to give it no transition, as a sort of practical joke.

I gave Yo Puta a two out of ten. Like Baise Moi, it tries to make a claim to being extreme. It gives nothing to back this claim up with, and thus winds up little more than a limp noodle. I would not even recommend seeing it for free.

Still not sure what it exactly was that I just watched here. This is a strange mix of documentary and a scripted plot, featuring both actors and real prostitutes.

Exactly what does the movie try to achieve? What is its message? Does it just try to give us a view into the world of porn and prostitution? If so, than what is the point of it, since this movie shows and tells very little new or interesting. It's filled with interviews that just becomes too much of the same after a while. Even though the movie is only 87 minutes short, it feels much longer.

The movie feels like a rather weird and failed experiment to mixes documentary with a scripted story and characters. The movie is made in documentary style mostly but the style, scripted situations and actors makes the whole movie feel rather artificial. A weird and failed fusion of fact and fiction.

Especially the style was a problem to me. Fast, pointless cuts but the weirdest thing to watch, was that the backgrounds, during the interviews, were all obviously added later to the movie. The movie tries to be style full and beautiful but it just isn't. It instead is fake looking and for most part the style seems pointless and overdone.

Also a big problem is, that the movie just isn't interesting to watch. The movie doesn't say or show anything new or refreshing and even those who are interested in the subject will find very little to enjoy in this movie. It makes the movie very tiresome and boring to watch, already after the a couple of minutes.

The 'plotline' featuring Denise Richards and Daryl Hannah is like the entire movie; pointless and boring. Amazing to see that two professional actors lend their talents for such a production. Joaquim de Almeida also shows up in the movie. I'll bet they all thought they were making something refreshing and revolutionary here...

Avoid. That's the best and most sensible thing I can say about this movie.

3/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

A pointless movie about the world of prostitution, even though all we see are prostitutes and gigolos being interviewed for 90 min or so, without much interest, without showing something new, there also a story in the middle involving Daryl Hannah, Denise Richards, and Joaquim de Almeida's characters, that doesn't make much sense either. A very very boring movie, the mix between documentary and fiction didn't really work and also the dubbed dialog gives this picture a very cheap look. Why? I mean if this is supposed to be a movie featuring real people talking about their lives why dubbing it? some "actors" are dubbed and some others are not, it just felt weird. Also, the cinematography is poor.

I didn't understand what the director intended to do, but she failed at doing a good movie. My vote is 3

Title (Portugal)- Not available

Many of the previous comments were close-minded. I haven't seen this film in several months, but it's ingrained in my mind. "The Life" was not about supporting prostitution, but more about the reasons/situations that lead to and exist, in such a "profession" world-wide. The element of documentary and fiction was a different take on the subject. If the fictional part of the story was just as candid and raw as the documentary portion, then the film would've been better. The subtitles were somewhat distracting due to speed. But overall, the film accomplished it's task. The theme holds, "Prostitution shouldn't be glorified, but accepted as reality. Knowing reality illuminates the real world."-shav

The scenes that ostensibly advance the "plot" are few an far between; punctuated by a jumbled mess of mock-documentary confessional scenes. The documentary segments might have been somewhat interesting, if only for their multi-national take on a common theme, except for the fact that they were edited in such a way as to jump from person to person within a topic, then back again, in no apparent order. The effect was to make it seem as though the director was attempting to s-t-r-e-t-c-h limited footage to take up more time. Not necessary, as it turned out, because the film seemed twice as long as it actually is.

The big question here is whether the direction or editing is worse. I suppose the direction appears worse due to choppy editing; the editing was probably worsened by horrible direction.

It is unfair to judge the acting ability of either Daryl Hannah or Denise Richards based upon this film. Questioning their judgment (or desperation?) in appearing in this mess of a film is another story entirely!

María Lidón directed 'Yo puta' ('The Life') based on material and story by Adela Ibañez and Isabel Pisano, tied in three established actors (Daryl Hannah, Denise Richards, and Joaquim de Almeida), and creative camera work (visual manipulations, frame freezing, etc) by Ricardo Aronovich - all with the apparent intent of explaining the etiologies and manifestations of the life of prostitutes. And while many viewers find the mélange of effects (real time interviews with fictional superimposed storyline) too edgy to digest, for this viewer Lidón succeeds in informing her audience about the motivations and insights from honest prostitutes, gigolos, and their pimps with a gracious style.

Searching for a format to tie these interviews together, the writers paired a fictional prostitute (Hannah) with an Anthropology student (Denise Richards) working on a book of interviews with prostitutes. Their roles are minor. Where the film succeeds is in the selection of interviewees - mostly Spanish (the film is from Spain), but including French, Eastern European, and other nationality women and men. The moments with these people are magical showing primarily the soft interior of most of the women who know precisely what they are doing and why: there are messages of survival and true courage as well as libidinous abandonment! There are rough spots in the film, extended moments that cry for editing, but the overall result is informative, creative and entertaining. Not for everyone perhaps, but for the curious and for those who enjoy experimental cinema this is a worthwhile film. Grady Harp

Today I feel many people get off on watching famous actors engage in sex and roaming in position which this film portrays. I don't think that this film is for people who love to watch sex on the box, but however for the people who never go that step to engage in hiring a prostitute.

The movie explores the lives and feelings in which call girls, escorts and gigolo's work. It provides some fantastic screens shots like the technique of framing a street. Clearly its providing the viewer with the environment which these people earn money to survive.

Denise Richards and Darryl Hannah I believe did not really have large roles in this film. The workers themselves got the fame and glory and the above girls were added as actors but portraying somewhat the main objective of the storyline.

It was interesting, I really liked the foreign use of language and subtitle, It makes the story more real rather then fake Hollywood. Have Denise and Darryl play there roles split-ed the film and was very clever in how it was timed. Everything flowed making it so much more interesting.

10 stars for the foreign girls who have the guts, 7 all up.

Yo Puta is nothing more than a pretentious soft porn documentary about prostitution, that doesn't do anything else than making its male viewers horny. It has no depth or intriguing characters whatsoever, just dirty talk, nudity and uninteresting opinions. The '' fictive '' part is so bad that it makes you want to puke instantly. How on earth could actresses like Daryll Hannah and Denise Richards lend their face for a horrible product like this?! I can just name one thing that is more degrading, and that's starring in an adult movie...

I was truly shocked by the way this movie actually glamorizes prostitution, knowing how much grief this degrading job brings to a lot of women. As long as there are still so much under aged girls and women that are forced to work in this business, I think it's completely inappropriate to glamorize prostitution.

I saw this movie on cable. I'm glad I didn't pay to rent it. Years ago I saw the Teresa Russell version titled "Whore" and I found it equally dry and disconnected. But I was at least compelled to watch that version with interest due to the slightly better quality of the production. This time around, despite the appeal of Denise Richards, I found it to be choppy and tedious. The constant "code switching" -- between the gritty documentary style and the Hollywood stars in fabricated studio sets -- really pollutes the vision of what this film is trying to achieve, I think. Honestly, the best thing this movie has going for it is the provocative poster featuring a woman shaving herself. (Furthermore, I can't get over the fact that Daryl Hannah continues to get work in the film industry, but that's just me.)

In closing, I wish to make an important point regarding the previous reviewer's comments. With all due respect to lizardiharp's submission above, the Spanish phrase 'Yo Puta' does not translate to 'The Life.' 'La Vida' means 'The Life.' 'Yo Puta' means, appropriately, 'I am a whore.'

This was a complete waste of eventually useful ideas. I enjoy a filmmaker who tries to get out of the preconceived canons and ways to tell a story. Nowadays, the best cinematic essays one can find is on how to reformulate narrative devices and story telling, and in a second plan, visual renewed ideas. If the eye narrative is in conformity with the storytelling device, that's when we have great films.

Here we have a work by someone who probably agrees with what i told above, but, at least in this try (second try, according to IMDb) was completely clumsy, useless, bad tasted. This is a terrible work, it pretended much, it tried to do things in an imaginative way, but the final work is a disaster, originated, i believe, in the lack of sensitivity of who worked this.

So, we're being told a fictionalized narrative, multi layered. This means we have a great number of threads to follow (here associated with different prostitutes). The device used is the false documentary. In the middle of that assumed fakery, we have a fiction line, with Richards, Hannah and Almeida.The problem is how rigidly this construction is made, and how little imaginative it becomes in its development. I mean, the actresses playing prostitutes (i really suppose they were all actresses, i just had a doubt on one or two) are a complete cliché, someone sit down and thought "how many kinds of prostitutes, and prostitution motivations, and prostitutes social conditions ca i think of?". And that's it. We have the African black nymphomaniac, we have the Brazilian hot "sexual available" lookalike prostitute, we have the Latin American Indian descendant prostitute, we have the high class escort (who is french!), we have the male prostitute. We have those who like what they do, those who do it for money, and those who don't have other choice. So useless, so superficial, so boring, such a waste of time. There are such great examples on fake documentaries about half real realities ('F for Fake' being at the top of this list) that it is terrible that someone could do this like we see here. What's the point of portraying people that look like prostitutes, talk like several stereotypes of prostitution would talk, act like prostitutes, live like prostitutes, but are in fact actors? The question is: why not place real prostitutes and make a real documentary if there is no manipulation, no intention at all behind the fake documentary?

Than, to conclude, the fiction story. An anthropology student, virgin, who is studying prostitution. Her neighbour is a prostitute and due to financial trouble, she comes to enter the job as well. What was the point? In the end, this developed as those common documentaries made for TV channels, History, Biography, Odisseia, etc. With an exception: with those documentaries, one can at least take valuable facts, if you don't know them, and if you like being distracted (i don't) you can rely on the awful fictional bits.

The visual resolution of this is made in accordance to the uselessness of the story choices. Most of the way we have women detached from whatever the environment was where they were speaking, and pasted above the photograph of a cheap hotel where prostitution happens. Other times we have useless visual tricks, of deforming images, and highly saturated colours.

My opinion: 1/5 avoid it.

http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com

Must a polite human being become so agitated and provoked with one simple miscalculation - I was going to see a documentary and I saw Denise Richards trying to prove to us all that she is an actress after all. This being the only movie where she can show her body and make a statement, I felt she has shown us nothing. A well spoken and well behaved young lady she may be - Daryl Hannah should have gone somewhere with that innocent kiss on a side of ms. Richards back. This is the only movie these two fine ladies get to ''act'' along side with a porn director Pierre Woodman and a bunch of Hungarian porn stars. Be it as it may - a watchable movie, but a bit posh - since it almost completely leaves out the lowest forms of prostitution - a blow for a blow.

Ain't it funny how a Spanish point of view suits the Americans? Or is it the other way around?

You see more of Daryl Hannah (and I mean more flesh and acting!) in Cocktail along side Tom Cruise. And that was just another chick-movie! What is this then?

They say Jesus Christ sacrificed for our sins, he suffered for us all… Alright, I think that I've just done the same that Jesus: I've watched "Yo, p..." so no one have to watch it anymore. I'll carry the cross, my brothers. The cross which is this apology of the prostitution, this fake documentary, this fake fiction. To prostitute yourselves is "just like any other thing" (that's what they say when they want to justify what cannot be justified, when they want to humanize the subhuman, to dignify the unworthy) , and men are just pigs, thirsty for sex, unmerciful pimps. The documentary part and its more than debatable message, its "artie" and post-modern touch, is hair-raising enough to keep yourself away from this treasure; but, let me tell you: the fictitious part is even worst!!! What did Denise Richards, Daryl Hannah, and Joaquin De Almeida drink in the party where the signed the contacts??? (I wan some of that too!!) . Well, the fictitious part has no rhythm, no sense of the narrative style… hey, What am I doing??? I'm not gonna lose more of my time with this crap: one of the biggest rubbish of 2004, and come on with that final dot!.

My rate: 0/10

Part documentary and part fiction this film involves the world of prostitution. I give it plus points for interviews of substance which evidently are the real thing, minus points for the rather lame fictional parts, and minus a bit more for being rather thrown together. The film is connected with a book by Isabela Pisano, Yo Puta, which came out about same time on conversations with prostitutes. So apparently the driving force behind the film was Isabela Pisano, who as an actress in the late 70s starred in films as a prostitute, and who later as a journalist wrote a book Yo Terrorista and a biography on Yasser Arafat with whom she had some sort of relationship over a 12-year period. More about all this on Wikipedia and links you will find there. I do think that this film presents a very worthwhile, multifaceted view of prostitution. To its credit the film is more interviews than story.

Very disappointing. I wanted Denise Richards and Daryl Hannah, not this most-of-the-time boring documentary. I must admit though, before ordering the DVD, after seeing the trailer, and checking it out on IMDb, I did know it was a semi-documentary, but was just now very dismayed to see so little of the two actresses that were my main interest. Instead, I suffered through pimps, male escorts, and a variety of stuff I wouldn't have wanted on Movie Night at Casa RavenGlam. I am in a grumpy mood. Wanted pretty Denise Richards. Bah! There is a truck-ugly black hooker in the interviews that hog the screen as I just sit there wishing Denisie, Denisie, won't you pleasie? Hell, it's hopeless enough when you're wishing upon an ice princess, but when her screen-time is minimal...

If you wanna watch this for nudity, rather try PRIVATE's CASTING X. Pierre Woodman, the charming ol' rogue, and his work, is there in full glory and can be loads of fun, depending on his victim of the hour. If you wanna see a story about two beauties in a world of prostitution, stay clear, there's very little footage of Denise and Daryl; the story is virtually absent. If you want a documentary about prostitution, yeah, go for it, but I fail to see anything insightful. This is nothing ground-breaking. It's elementary. The world is full of monsters and if you have to shag monsters for your money, you're gonna have a horrible time, of course! If you watch this to have a great time looking at the poor mother-of-a-three-year-old crying at her wasted life, THEN *UCK OFF AND DIE! (IMDb should have allowed me the artistic license here to do that one uncensored but I suppose it's no use arguing)

In short, a wasted opportunity for Denise Richards fans. She is so damn pretty she should have been in a decent movie looking as great as she does here, years after her turn as a Bond girl. Hey, Denise, you really screwed up! So many of your stuff fall flat! Hell, who was your agent? Well, fire the bum!

When I heard about this film I thought that it was going to be a dumb porno about prostitutes or superficial like some other programs that I have seen that tried to tap into the true world of prostitutes. I decided to give it a chance because I knew and respected the work of the American actresses in the film. I felt that this movie was very artistically done and I loved the mixture of languages, Spanish, Italian, Portugese, Hungarian, English etc. This mixture of language displayed how widespread this profession is. In this movie a variety of prostitutes were shown from girls working with agencies, to girls working alone to girls trying to do porn. It also showed some of the male's perspectives of the business and their involvement. I especially liked how it touched on human trafficking and sex slaves because many people do not know that some prostitutes are forced into the profession. Overall an extremely well done movie.