2019 Directed by Josephine Mackerras
Alice, a perfect wife and mother who lives happily with her husband and child until the day she discovers her husband is living a double life that has ruined her financially and left her a single mother. Alice fights back and dives into a world beyond anything she has ever known.
Alice. 2019. Directed Josephine Mackerras.
Women who portray sex workers/prostitutes often find themselves in a bad position. For example, raped, robbed, and/or their pimp kills them. Alice is a film in which Emilie Piponnier (Alice Fernando) is forced to work as an escort to earn money that her husband has squandered on escorts. If one is looking for a female directed, female version of the oldest profession then, Alice is the film for you.
Alice befriends Chloe Boreham (Lisa) who connects her to female owned escort agencies that only take 30 to 40 percent of her earnings. In addition, these escort services only work with high end wealthy clients. As a result, Alice makes a great deal of money in…
YES! I loved this.
Emilie Piponnier slayed her portrayal of Alice! I loved everything about Alice's characterization: her cleverness, her interiority, her multi-dimensionality, and her grit.
Alice is about a bad ass mom who navigates a harrowing situation paved in uncertainty and patriarchal double standards and perseveres towards self-determination. It's written/directed by Josephine Mackerras in a way that's charming, compelling, sometimes lighthearted but more often dramatic, filled with heart, and fleshed out with authenticity.
This movie hit me in such a way that I spontaneously broke out into a cheer at the ending! 😬🤩🙌
🌟Fave movies in which girls/women win & it’s fucking awesome🌟
A nicely done feminist take on a woman who uses sex work to take control of her life, with all the complexities that go with that choice. Alice starts off as a happily married mother of young boy whose world comes crashing down when she learns her husband has bankrupted the family on his addiction to pricey escorts and then disappeared. Desperate to keep her home, she signs up with the agency she found as part of her husband's secret life as the only way to earn lots of money quickly. Everything seems to go okay until it doesn't.
This might sound like a titillating feature but it's nothing like that at all. It's also not a dark expose of…
An overall good film with a great lead performance by Emilie Piponnier - but it's also punctuated by puzzling moments that run a bit too close to oversimplifying the issues at hand. I'm also not sure how to feel about the ending. Nevertheless, the moments that work really do work, especially when it comes to female friendship and the main character's relationship with sex work. Even when the melodrama derails the story a bit, there are enough strengths in here to keep it interesting.
GRADE: B
Alice is a film that everyone needs to see. It thrives on its ability to look without judgement on the decisions that women make for themselves whilst also looking at the strength of female friendship. This film is extraordinary and is able to explore ideas that many filmmakers dare not touch for fear of retribution.
Some really empathetic and thoughtful scenes scattered throughout the film work wonders. Challenging and bold, this is a pretty astonishing feature debut, but it isn’t without problems.
A lot of the narrative drive feels extremely forced, which made sense afterwards hearing Josephine Mackerras talk about the film. She wanted to tell a story about the double standards of sex work; how women are treated differently to men in the industry. If a man pays for it, he’s a simply a bad husband; if a woman does it for work, she’s a bad mother. This central premise was good and important, but it was surrounded by a lot of plot points that felt shoehorned in to drive it home.
There’s a…
The recipient of the SXSW Grand Jury Award and rightfully so! This film offers an acute examination of a motherhood as well as systemic and social gender disparity. Powerful and surprisingly funny! Émilie Piponnier is magnificent!
"I'm not your whore!" - Alice
Alice on one hand challenges double standards head on, and then celebrates motherhood in its very patriarchal society. Even with the premise, the film is tastefully done, without being overly explicit. Alice thankfully gets a really amazing character arc and a nice ending too.
alice became who society told her to be instead of asserting her independence and finding her own path. when her husband leaves her and their son after spending all of their money on escorts, alice has to rebuild her life.
though hesitant at first, she becomes an escort in order to make enough money fast enough to save her home. the film talks a lot about how negatively sex work is perceived by society and the double-standard of men versus women engaging in sex work, but sex work isn’t painted as bad and the women don’t feel ashamed, but empowered. the profession is treated with respect instead of being portrayed as seedy.
there’s also female friendship excellence!! alice and lisa…
Say what you want about French, but they do know how distinguish themselves from the rest of the world. Also, superb performance from Emilie Piponnier, as a desperate mother, left and hindered by sex-addicted husband. And by the whole sexistic justice system, who supports more morally deranged parents, than the other half, shamed for having dubious profession, for the sake of survival.
Alice DOES live here...anymore? A fiercely sex positive view of how one woman copes when the rug is pulled out from under her is backed by amazing performances from Emilie Piponnier and Chloe Boreham in particular. There's a tonally strange montage of having fun in Paris, which sticks out like a sore thumb, but otherwise this cuts pretty close to the bone. Surprise MIFF 2019 Q&A with director revealed that the child actor was none other than the son of writer/director/producer Josephine Mackerras. (Speaking of the Q&A, one douchebag not only decided to mansplain the film to the director, but also accused her of not having enough strong male role models in the film. In my only act of defiance…
