The Escort

I'll keep this short; 'The Escort' has covered most of a touching movie. Bouncing between the edges of morality, love, humour and drama you'll find a chemical reaction between two well played characters both struggling with their shadow sides of life.

Both Fonseca and Doneger performing par excellence and in contrast to the sufficient (sometimes close to over-)acting by Campbell and other co-stars.

The story itself is a contemporary version of existing grandeurs like 'Pretty Woman' and 'Indecent proposal'. If there is anything negative to mention it is the lacking depth and meagre storyline.

Not a rough diamond but certainly a polished ruby, well worth viewing.

I hope that talking about sex doesn't bother you, otherwise you won't be able to appreciate this comedy.

It's a love story spiced with some very good characters. Lindsy Fonseca is pretty (as she was in Kick-Ass) and Michael Doneger plays the part very well: he also wrote the script (together with Brandon A. Cohen), which is an always noteworthy something.

The story flows fluidly until its natural end and effortlessly keeps your attention high. It deals with talented (and good looking) young people living unusual and interesting lives. And the result is entertaining.

'The Escort' covers much of what we do as a job, and it's even a touching movie. It goes about love, drama, touching moments, and even humor. The relationship between the two partners is really well done as they struggle with their own lives. The performance is quite good on most cases although there's some overacting by some of them. It's not the first time this story is told on movies, as you already know, but this is kinda a more contemporary version of it. As I said, I'm an escort myself and I find that the movie doesn't offend our profession on any level. Obviously it's not the best movie out there, so I gave it only a 6/10, still, if you work on this profession you're definitely going to enjoy it.

The above synopsis (that written on this Amazon page, next to the film title) is all wrong. So I will attempt to write my own.

The Escort is a sincerely honest film following the life of a young, female escort (Natalie) who feels 'forced' into the profession because of a past experience. When she catches the attention of a young unemployed 'journalist' (Mich), who is also a sex addict, she finds herself questioning her lifestyle. I'm kidding, they actually happen to have a lot of common ground- who'd have thought? So there is no judgement of one another, and they devise an agreement to help one another: Natalie agrees to be the subject of a controversial journalism project, that may just win Mich the career of his dreams. And, Mich agrees to serve as Natalie's protection and security (against reckless, violent clients), per Natalie's request. They hit it off, as friends, getting to know one another. But then, they become more....but are either of them ready for that? Natalie pursues a sex-filled life because it's all she can do. For Mich, it's all he wants to do.

This film is very mature, but surprisingly there is no nudity. And the acting and casting choices were commendable. It really worked. I would say there definitely was comedy in this, but it wasn't very strong. The only comedy I appreciated was how Mich's family and friends reacted to the revelation of him being a sex addict. What I didn't appreciate was having a twelve-year-old curse and utter such profanities -this is not comedy. Having to resort to this, to get a laugh from the audience is cheap and crass. I would say this film is more of the drama genre.

The only other thing I didn't like was how Mich had no respect for women, he used them for sex and then, dismissed them easily. This was expected of course, (for a sex addict), but I didn't like it.

It was strangely refreshing to find that this was not a film where love forcefully changes you. Instead they made the choice to change their lifestyles for love, there was no obligation to do so: it was based on opportunity. This means that Mich was not her 'saviour', she was an independent but lonely woman. She didn't need him, she wanted him. If that's not love, I don't know what is.

Likewise, it was also refreshing to find that Natalie was not brought into the 'escort' business because of a poor upbringing, 'that it was all she ever knew'. It wasn't that at all, she was actually Stanford -educated. Such controversy.

From the start, this is like an amiable sitcom. Not really believable if you think about it, but you tend not to. Some wonderfully witty and not in the least natural dialogue. The explanation for why she became an escort sums this up: pat, clever and utterly irrelevant to most women's stories. This can be considered a very lightweight take on "Pretty Woman" (known of course for its heft), but is even less believable than that. So why watch? Well, it's often amusing, sometimes sexy and even very touching at certain moments. Notably too it has some WONDERFUL shots of LA, very unexpected use of sites I know and have only passingly noticed. So props to the DP. It's not a terrible movie, certainly not a great one, really a genre piece with no more sex than some with far more innocent pretexts.