Hustlers
“Hustlers hits a home run with its wider allegory to capitalism in America.”
Title: Hustlers (2019)
Director: Lorene Scafaria 👩🏼🇺🇸
Writer: Lorene Scafaria 👩🏼🇺🇸 based on the article by Jessica Pressler 👩🏼🇺🇸
Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸
Technical: 5/5
Strippers: Bare legs and tits that headlessly rove the backdrop of movies about men, right? Fuck no! Writer-director Lorene Scafaria slaps people upside the head with Hustlers and gloriously centers dancers in this fun-as-hell heist movie. Its magnetism has stuffed a smooth $136 million into its thigh high boots so far, but for a review that wants to talk about inclusiveness: How well does Hustlers actually represent sex workers?
A couple stereotypes slip through (more on that later), perhaps due to the gap in knowledge that comes from Scafaria rendering a world outside her personal purview. She does her due diligence by consulting with Jacqueline Frances, whose job it was to “make sure strippers felt seen and represented,” yet sex workers online have highlighted the hypocrisy of the film, which depicts them as criminals and perpetuates the denigration of full-service sex work. Others feel rightfully frustrated by a fickle public that will gladly consume their stories, but that stays damningly silent when laws like FOSTA-SESTA threaten to undermine their livelihoods. That said, reception hardly amounts to a black-and-white condemnation—plenty of sex workers have expressed enthusiasm, too.
Beyond its specific world of dancing, Hustlers more broadly follows a group of working-class women who swindle Wall Street fat cats out of their money. Scafaria excoriates unchecked capitalism while sympathizing with Americans who have helplessly watched income inequality grow to its highest point since the Census Bureau began tracking it in the ‘60s. Today, when multi-billionaires pay the lowest tax rates in the country, Hustlers feels exceedingly timely.
From a technical standpoint, the film’s tight scripting, glitzy cinematography, and pitch-perfect soundtrack combine into gorgeous spectacle. The movie plays its audience like a skillful snake charmer, demanding audible gasps or crowd applause in one of the more interactive theater experiences I’ve had outside of horror movies. For these reasons, Hustlers easily established itself as my favorite screening at Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) this year.
Gender: 5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES
GradeMyMovie.com Assessment: 77% of key cast and crew members were women.
Scafaria and three other writers dubbed themselves the Fempire a decade ago, and that feminist pedigree still holds up today. The protagonists of Hustlers all fight to reclaim their value and dignity from a patriarchal society, where overt sexism is all in a day’s work. Their methods may not strictly conform to the law, but their motivations have been rendered so sympathetically that Scafaria clearly intends for viewers to root for the film’s bedazzled anti-heroes.
Above all, Hustlers showcases its core dancers as fully formed people. Ringleader Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) loves her daughter, calling motherhood “a sickness” for how much her life revolves around her child. Similarly, her partner-in-crime Destiny (Constance Wu) also experiences the gift and burden that is motherhood, on top of having to care for her grandmother (Wai Ching Ho) who raised her in the absence of Destiny’s parents. Meanwhile, Mercedes (Keke Palmer) just wants to marry her boyfriend who has been locked up in jail and Annabelle (Lili Reinhart) works to find emotional independence after her conservative family tosses her out for working at a strip club. They all work hard, striving to overcome the bad hands they’ve been dealt in life.
While the richness of the above characters feels unparalleled, it doesn’t apply across the board. Jarringly, midway through the film we see Russian immigrant sex workers caricatured as non-English speaking floozies who swoop in after the 2008 recession and take the jobs of the dancers who had been there before. Moreover, they’re villainized for offering full-service sex work. In fairness, the characterization comes directly from the article upon which Hustlers is based, when Destiny’s real-world proxy Roselyn Keo says, ”There were all these Russian girls and Colombian girls, and they were giving blow jobs for $300.” But Scafaria didn’t have to translate that dismissive aside to the screen. The Russian dancers serve as the one dissonant note among an otherwise raucous celebration of sex workers.
Race: 4.5/5
GradeMyMovie.com Assessment: 31% of key cast and crew members were POC.
Despite featuring women of color in leading roles, scant references to their cultural backgrounds actually appear. In fact, the only instance I can recall from two viewings involves a single line, when Destiny’s immigrant grandmother speaks coyly of her time as a young woman in Shanghai.
Maybe this should come as no surprise, since the real counterparts behind Ramona and Mercedes—Samantha Barbash and Marsi Rosen, respectively—are both white. But I’m glad Scafaria and the film’s casting department decided to hire more inclusively. To star J.Lo, who is Puerto Rican, addresses one of the most egregious gaps in media representation: Nearly 1 in 5 Americans are Hispanic, but only 3% of leads in top films over the last decade were Latino. While J.Lo does exhibit some troublesome history with anti-Blackness, she moves that paltry stat forward. And I can’t ignore her performance—J.Lo stuns the screen with her liquid moves and sheer swagger, to the point where I couldn’t imagine this film without her.
Meanwhile, Destiny’s counterpart Keo was borne to Cambodian refugees. While it may have been more exciting to see a Southeast Asian actor, Constance Wu stands her ground and delivers a solid performance that thankfully retains her Chinese heritage, rather than unconvincingly adopts a Southeast Asian narrative.
Overall, by centering working-class Latin and Asian American women as the film’s narrative drivers and emotional heartbeat, Hustlers spotlights some of Hollywood’s more overlooked demographics.
Bonus for LGBTQ: +0.25
Trace Lysette, seen previously on Transparent, had real experience dancing at Scores in Manhattan, where much of Hustlers takes place. When she tweeted her desire to work with the project, she wound up hired. Onscreen, the trans actor plays Tracey, a glamorous dancer whose jealous boyfriend keeps coming around to the club. Her scenes are limited but impactful, garnering heartfelt laughter from the audience when she gripes about him in the dressing room, or is forced to pull him aside and assuage his insecurities in person when he crashes her workplace.
Mediaversity Grade: A 4.92/5
A movie risks sounding tone deaf when recounting the stories of others, especially when it markets itself as empowering. But Scafaria pulls it off, hitting a home run with its wider allegory to capitalism in America—a theme pulled directly from Jessica Pressler’s original article, which calls the dancers’ scam “a modern Robin Hood story.”
Who could denounce such a classic tale? The fact of cheering for an inclusive cast feels even more on point, as Scafaria asks audiences to root for women of color; sex workers; trans women; working-class women. While it may draw the line at some confusing places, such as disparaging immigrant Russians, the general arc aims pure and true. Hustlers fires a bullet through the heart of unchecked capitalism. In an environment where 70% of millennials say they’d be down to vote for a socialist president, it’s no wonder the film has resonated so widely.
Like Hustlers? Try these other titles featuring sex workers.
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Blade Runner (2017)